Marxism as Myth in Zola's "Germinal"

Author(s): N. R. Cirillo
Source: Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Sep., 1977), pp. 244-255
Published by: Penn State University Press
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 Marxism as Myth
In Zola's Germinal
N.R. CIRILLO

Emile Zola's Germinalis a national epic which locates the center

of its heroic encounter in the class struggle. It is, moreover, a na-
tional epic neither nationalist, elitist, nor rightist, written at a
time when such a feat might reasonably be thought to have been
impossible, particularlyin France. This national epic which is not
elitist has, furthermore, a hero who, despite his powerful identifi-
cation with the working class, is largely defined by certain tradi-
tional literary archetypes.
Zola's concept of the class struggle is largely Marxian1despite
the fact that, to the despair of many, he was by no means a Marx-
ist,2 although he created in Germinalthe only major proletarian
novel of the nineteenth century. As will be demonstrated in this
paper, his use of Marxisttheory within the novel is purely literary:
he transforms historic dialectic into historic myth and resolves
three major western literary archetypes by means of it. In Germi-
nal, Marxismas myth is inextricably bound to western myth and
is its culmination.
Germinalremains nonetheless a national epic. Without destroy-
ing the essential integrity of Marxismas an international move-
ment, and, in fact, reinforcing this by wedding it indissolubly to
western tradition, he particularizesit as the available solution to
the national French economic and social crisis and represents it
metaphorically as if it were as purely and appropriately Gallic as
The Song of Roland.
Epic was the scale on which Zola best conceived the novel, and
it is the epic in its older and more traditional forms which shapes
both the action of Germinaland its weight of technical detail.
Germinalevokes three major older epics: La commedia of Dante;
La Gerusalemmeliberata of Tasso, both with their Virgiliansource
intact; and The Song of Roland. Of all the epics, the Dantean is
dominant, and even the most casual reader of Germinal must feel
its presence. It provides the structure of the entire work, begin-
ning with the descent of Part I, renderingthe mine and all life
associated with the mine through the essential metaphor of dam-
nation, and orders the conclusion of the novel through the action

244

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 GERMINAL: MARXISM AS MYTH 245

of ascent and the idea of resurrection. The pervasiveDantean pre-

sence, along with the evocation of the other two epics, argues the
universalityof Zola's case by investing the miners of Montsou
with the symbolic authority to represent not only the nineteenth-
century worker but the fulfillment of man's historic fate in the
West.
Unexpectedly classical for Emile Zola, self-proclaimed natural-
ist and sometime journalist, Part I of the novel provides all the
essential narrativeand rhetorical elements of the work. The first
of the six chapters which comprise this part most powerfully ex-
presses the organic mythic conception that is the basic metaphor
of the novel, largely through Zola's lyric evocation of archetype
as a function of character, setting and action.
The very first line of the novel calls forth the Dantean universe,
even echoing that familiar iambic triad of prepositional phrases,
although Zola's involvement with the material world is, of course,
much more direct than Dante's. Dante's opening, "Nel mezzo del
cammin di nostra vita. . ."3 instantaneously identifies a metaphysi-
cal geography, his road to be measured thereafter through imagery,
abstract number and geometric axiom. This is the road which has
led the poet into the "selva oscura," in which "la diritta via era
smarrita,"4into that forest of powerful images of darknessand
loss of faith.
The demands of the novel notwithstanding, the unmarked dark-
ness of the opening passage of Germinalevokes immediately Dante's
world: "Dans la plaine rase, sous la nuit sans étoiles. . ."5 in which
the undifferentiated "we" implicit in the "nostra" of Dante's
first line becomes the "homme" unnamed who ". . . suivait seul
la grande route de Marchiennes à Montsou."6 The universalgeog-
raphy of Dante becomes, necessarily, the particularizedlandscape
of the nineteenth century.
If one of the primary features of Zola's landscape is fact - the
road is, materially, that from Marchiennesto Montsou - it omits
neither magic nor mystery. Zola's naturalism,unlike that of, for
instance, the Goncourts, was a true cosmology. Born of traditional
religious and cultural myth and the science of Zola's day, it is
clearly germinativeof modern ideological myth. One factor which
accounts for the potency of its expression in Germinalis the con-
stant evocation of the magical and mysterious as organically part
of the real and factual. This expression, however, is shaped by the
literary archetypes, most notably the Dantean.
From the landscape "sans étoiles," the unnamed man immedi-
ately begins to distinguish structures which appear to him first as
manifest reality, as fact: ". . . d'une vision de village aux toitures
basses et uniformes."7 He walks forward precisely "deux cents pas."

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246 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

But as he approaches, the hard reality of what he sees begins to dis-

sipate and becomes ultimately ". . . cette apparition fantastique,
noyée de nuit et de fumée," from which ". . . une seule voix mon-
tait, la respiration grosse et longue d'un échappement de vapeur,
qu'on ne voyait point."8
"Alors l'homme reconnut une fosse."9 "Une fosse," not "une
mine." The two hundred paces the man has walked for a closer
look have moved him from the world of fact to the world of truth,
from gables and roofs to fantastic apparitions. What the man recog-
nizes ("l'homme reconnut") is the truth: it is a "fosse," not just a
phenomenon identified by the neutral and technical word "mine."
The word "mine" was the obvious, most commonly used word
Zola could have selected,10 but surely does not evoke, as "fosse"
does, the first meaning of "grave,"the second "pit."
It is, of course, Dante's word as well. "Che fai tu in questa
fossa?"11will ring, if implicitly , just as solemnly for "l'homme"
of Germinal, the flawed hero Etienne Lantier, on his way to po-
litical, historical and, needless to say, temporal resurrection as it
does for the poet in search of grace.
Etienne moves two hundred paces closer, and, like the pits of
Acheron across which the poet sights "un vecchio bianco per an-
tico pelo,"12 Charonthe ferryman, Etienne discovers that the pit
of Le Voreux is served by "un veillard vêtu d'un tricot de laine
violette, coiffé d'une casquette en poil de lapin,"13 the haulier
known as Bonnemort. In two senses, Bonnemort will ferry Etienne
into the pit: first, by being the agent of his introduction to a work-
ing team of colliers, and, second, by imparting to him at length his
personal history, one that will represent at the outset the collective
tragedy of the Montsou miners.
In this last capacity, Bonnemort is, also, the bard of the oral tra-
dition, the illiterate singer of the chronicles of a place and a people.
He has earned the name Bonnemort by defeating death three
times, and the accidents are reminiscent of the more bizarre pun-
ishments of the Dantean pit: ". . . une fois avec tout le poil roussi,
une autre avec de la terre jusque dans le gésier, la troisième avec le
ventre gonflé d'eau comme une grenouille."14
Bardic singer and Étienne's ferryman, or, in the broader sense,
guide, Bonnemort is also a magician, having returned three times
from the dead. He is, then, in all functions, a work-coarsened
Virgil as well, the familiar Virgil the magician of medieval icon-
ography and the Virgil of Dante. Furthermore, Bonnemort's
climactic murderof the fat and blooming Cécile has its Virgilian
implication: Dante is strongly admonished by the Poet15 to quell
his feelings of compassion for the creaturesof the pit, for they are
nothing but embodiments of the sins they represent. As a result of

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 GERMINAL: MARXISM AS MYTH 247

this stern lecture, Dante's behavior becomes more aggressive,and

he stamps, at one point, on the head of one of them.
Damned finally to total silence and incomprehension by the
ravagesof fifty years in the pit, Bonnemort will complete his song
with the apparently senseless murderof Cécile, committed with
all the insouciance of the senile and the damaged. Cécile, intro-
duced into the novel immediately following the descent of the
first six chapters, is indeed the ripe embodiment of all the sins of
the bourgeoisie. Her murderby Bonnemort later in the novel paral-
lels structurallythe murderby the mine of Catherine, the starving
counterpart to Cécile, who cannot be saved either by Etienne's
words or actions, colored as they often were by hesitation and reser-
vation.
It is also through Bonnemort in this opening chapter that the
other two literary archetypes, La Gerusalemmeliberata and The
Song of Roland, are introduced, although these will never be fully
realized and will function only within the major Dantean structur-
ing. Both Village 240 and Montsou are metaphorically conceived
as captive of a foreign power, economically captive, that is, by the
absentee Parisianownership, and this is briefly shadowed forth by
Bonnemort in this first chapter. In doing so, he fulfills his bardic
function by revealingthe source of religious awe, and there is no
irony in what Zola does here. When asked by Etienne who owns
the mine, Bonnemort hesitates and answers vaguely in broken
sentences. Narrativereplaces dialogue in the only interruption of
Bonnemort's song, and it is the quality of his response which be-
comes significant: "Sa voix avait pris une sorte de peur religieuse,
c'était comme s'il eût parlé d'un tabernacle inaccessible, où se
cachait le dieu repu et accroupi, auquel ils donnaient tous leur
chair, et qu'ils n'avaientjamais vu."*6 For Bonnemort, Parisian
capitalism is a malevolent and ultimately even a foreign god who
sends armies to maintain its hold on the captive mining towns.
The metaphor expressed here and firmly developed later in the
novel belongs more to Tasso and The Song of Roland than to
Dante, for, despite the powerful national plea that shapes so much
of the Commedia, Dante's Italian state remains ever an abstraction
structured - and occasionally jerry-built - by his version of God's
ordinances. Zola's sense of place, like Tasso's, is especially con-
crete, and, from this first religious evocation onwards, the devel-
oping correspondences work to deeply ironic effect throughout
the novel as Holy Sepulchre becomes sacred soil and Christian
works become manual labor.
Thus early is Zola's version of Marxistprinciple expressed,
bonded, however, to older traditions: work legitimatizes owner-
ship and the means of production is the workers' rightful property;

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248 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

capital interests are therefore foreign, and any attempt to enforce

these interests must necessarily take the form of invasion. Like
Disraeli's idea of rich and poor as two nations,17 Zola's version of
the economic conflict between worker and capitalist is transcen-
dent: they are two armies at war.
Zola fulfills this theme later in the novel in powerful evocation
of The Song of Roland. The "foreign" Parisianowners send na-
tional troops to break the strike, and they come, like the Saracens,
fearfully armed, to defeat the ragged, starvingminers who defend
that soil into which - and Zola makes much of this image - they
have for generations poured their blood. The strike is, in reality,
broken by the traitorous Chavalwho, like Ganelon, greedily suc-
cumbs to the flattering offers of the enemy and leads a small
group back to work.
Structurally and dramatically, then, Chapter 1 makes the epic
statement: the cosmic proportions of the work itself are revealed,
and the concrete circumstances and situations of the narrativeare
identified. No loose and baggy monster, Germinal preservesan un-
wanted harmony and economy throughout. This is largely so be-
cause the work hews mainly to the development of two elements:
that of Etienne Lantier in the familiar and traditional epic mode
as the hero who achieves grace by successfully overcoming tests of
insuperable difficulty in a universe which is absolute, despite the
fact that it is only history which has preempted God;18 and, second,
the development of the centrality of the mine itself as a physical
setting and as the symbolic embodiment of both those tests which
Etienne must overcome and of the fallen world to which he must
help bring order.
It is therefore with great economy that the novel moves from
the components of Chapter 1, from Bonnemort, bard and patri-
arch, to the family in which he occupies this latter role and which
will be, quite immediately, the agents of Etienne's encounter with
the pit. By introducing the women of the Maheu family, Chapter
2 continues, subvocally, the epic theme, strongly evoking Tasso
and his Virgilian source. Unusual in Zola's customary character-
izations of women,19 both Maheude, fecund, maternal, and fierce
protector of home and family, who is ewiges Weibturned warrior
at the end, and Catherine,the epicene and nubile child whose
sacrificial death is simultaneous with her initiation into woman-
hood, are immensely positive creations.
In the case of Catherine, the archetype of the female warrior
is expressed in more than just a general way. At the end of Chap-
ter 3 of Part I, Etienne, havingjust overcome his first test in the
mine, those grotesque, subterraneantortures of the galleries, dis-
covers that his companion is merely dressed in the ordinary uni-
form of the collier and is in fact a female. Like Tasso's Clorinda

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 GERMINAL: MARXISM AS MYTH 249

(and her source, Virgil's Camilla), Catherinewears her masculine

garb with grace. Her collier's clothes are battle dress, both meta-
phorically, in that they are her daily work clothes, and literally,
in that they clothe her during the pitched battle with the troops
sent by the owners of the mine: ". . . on aperput Catherine, les
poings en l'air, brandissantelle aussi des moitie'sde brique. . . elle
crevait d'une envie de massacrerle monde."20
In the widest sense, then, the six chapters of Part I provide the
essential metaphor of descent into the pit. All of Germinalis cette
fosse: the fate of the mine equals not only the economic survival
but the survivalin every sense of the characters,all of whom are
damned by its fortunes. Consequently, Montsou and Village 240
are the cities of Hell on earth. The descent of Part I is followed
immediately by the breathless luxury chez Grégoire, which opens
Part II. Food and physical comfort dominate the dialogue and nar-
rative of the opening of Chapter 7. If the obvious sins represented
are greed and gluttony, it becomes increasingly clear as the chap-
ter develops that all this exists upon the tenuous economic power
of the typical nineteenth-century bourgeois. The Grégoiresare not
mastersbut have simply mortgaged some power from the "insati-
able" masters, the foreigners from Paris. La Piolaine, the Grégoires'
substantial home is, like Armida's garden of delights, an illusion,
which can as readily be destroyed by the power of truth. Truth,
however, for La Piolaine is the force of nature and history: a
mine disaster or a revolution can instantly dispell its magic.
The resident sins of La Piolaine are greed and gluttony, as those
chez Hennebeau are greed and lust, both in their practice and in
their frustration. To these traditional sins, Zola adds one unique
to the industrial nineteenth century and common to all the bour-
geoisie of the novel: economic exploitation. It is the cardinal sin,
but only in the sense that it is the sin of a system and a whole so-
ciety. All the practitioners depicted in this novel are themselves
venial. There are no bloated capitalists here, engorged with the
blood of workers;only, as d'Annunzio would so pithily put it, the
worms in our daily bread,21 mindless of the corruption of their
way of life.
Locked into their class and its historical development, the sin-
ners of Germinal,the bourgeoisie, are victims as well. Because of
this, the dramaof salvation, consistently evoked by the Dantean
structure and imagery, is located not in the interior arena of the
soul but in the exterior arena of history. But the sin of exploita-
tion must be punished, however tepid the atmosphere in which it
is practised. The thoroughly impersonal murder of Cécile by the
innocent Bonnemort is but one metaphorical representation of the
underlying thesis of class war and class revolution. Its logic lies

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250 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

there and not in the action of the novel, because it presagesthe

historic theme realized at the conclusion.
The heroic role, therefore, of such a social and historic epic is
shaped largely by the older forms of national epic, finding its arche-
types in Aeneas, Roland, Boiardo and Rinaldo. The personal salva-
tion of Dante's work>so reliant upon free will and reason, is not so
much superseded in Zola's world as made dependent for its reali-
zation upon the historic process. Étienne's personal survivalfrom
the mine disaster at the end of the novel is amplified into resur-
rection only after his talk with the oracular Maheude, which con-
firms his final course as he leaves Montsou forever, in step with
the hammer blows of revolution he imagines he hears beneath him
in the mine.
Etienne's development throughout the novel consistently con-
firms the national hero as model. Measuredagainst any ordinary
set of standards, Etienne's temptations are no temptations at all.
His love for Catherine (and it is love, not lust) and his desire to
better himself are, after all, the very stuff of the middle class dream
and the art it often generated in the nineteenth century. But Zola
early established through the structural metaphor of descent in
Part I that this middle-class society is a fallen world and its values
corrupt. The vision of either a clean white shirt or domesticity
with Catherinehas the power to lull Etienne's drive toward action.
Measuredagainst the revolutionary standardor the older one of
national duty, these are indeed temptations, as love and comfort
have always been for the national hero. In Zola's world, revolu-
tion fulfills but does not supersede the older version of a national
and historic purpose which defined the traditional hero, for Zola
anneals it to both the historic and the national.
More from the title and its function within the structure than
from any other component of the novel can one argue Zola's ad-
herence to the principle of the historic necessity of the revolution.
The thirteen month time span provides amplitude for the com-
plex events of the novel, but, more richly, a symbolic chronology
as well, one which exploits the Dantean structure in order to trans-
cend it. The descent of Part I takes place in Marchwhich, if evoc-
ative of the dying commemorated by the Good Friday of Dante's
work, reaches beyond it to its own naturalistic origins. The resur-
rection of Part VI, thirteen months later, once again exploits the
Dantean in order to transcend it. Dante's ascent on the dawn of
Easter morning is simultaneously action and symbol. There is no
such simultaneity in Zola's handling of Étienne's ascent. The res-
cue from the mine is treated as just that, with no resonances. Its
symbolic meaningsrequire a separate chapter for their develop-
ment, one in which Étienne's return from the dead is rendered its

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 GERMINAL: MARXISM AS MYTH 251

full and logical significance by its re-expression through Zola's

unique use of Marxianteleology. This is the concluding chapter of
the novel, and it is only in its last line, in the concluding line of
the work itself, that the title is explained. Etienne's personal resur-
rection is measurableonly by the collective resurrection of that
exploited nation of workers, and Zola ties their moment to the in-
evitability of nature, to the eternal rebirth of the springtime.
The revolution is historically necessary. It will "éclater la terre."
It is naturalistic, not mechanistic; inevitable, not pre-determined.
As he walks toward the city, toward his newly committed life as
an activist, Etienne imagines he hears the hammer blows of the
miners hundreds of feet below him in the mines: the historic
course of revolution must be shaped by men, by the hands of the
workers, by, in this final image, workers quite literally in the womb
of the earth. As much Hegel as Marx here in this concluding image
of earth and time, Zola's version of the cosmic will is that it works
itself out both in space, that is, in nature, as well as in history.
His characterizationof Etienne, flawed hero that he is, with his
archetypal evocations, draws heavily from Hegelian thought as
well, seminal at any rate in the formulation of modern mythicism
and the concept of the archetypal. Thus, Zola welds historic pur-
pose indissolubly to national purpose, this latter expressed as the
loosest sense of community, as locale. He is, essentially, a poet;
like all poets before or after him who would conjure with the poli-
tics of others, Zola is finally his own man; his politics, mytho-
poesis. He uses Marxianthought as he used the Dantean, as a for-
mal structure to be exploited, and in continuity with western tra-
dition.
Tradition and the unique experience of a people, a loose but in-
telligible notion of nationality, is both the expressed^ideaof the
final chapter, that which defines the significance of Etienne's
resurrection,as well as the form of Zola's modification of Marx's
internationalism.The conclusive social and political vision belongs
to Maheude in this final chapter. Fecund still, she is ". . . lamentable
dans ses vêtements d'homme, la gorge et le ventre comme enflés
encore de l'humidité des tailles. . . ,"22 What begins here as dia-
logue becomes almost immediately indirect discourse, its authori-
ty therefore unmistakable. But it is nonetheless attributed to Ma-
heude, to a French female miner. The exploited nation of workers
is represented by the citizen who has suffered most cruelly, who
is defined by that place and by that long and unique tradition
germinated in that place. Zola would generalize only in this way:
people before doctrine. The Armée noire, the dragon's teeth of
the concluding image, is bred in that soil and is not only a matter
of history but of place.

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252 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

This idea of nationhood, of community, is expressed through-

out the novel always as a primal, autochthonous quality. Distinct-
ly Hegelian, it may have only come to Zola as an infection, "la
malattia egeliana"23having achieved epidemic proportions by the
Eighties. Germanic, then, in its way, Zola's idea of nationhood
lies closer to Volkstum than to Staat. The sense of place and its
conventions have magic, ritual qualities in Germinal.The sense of
place as a determinant is, of course, a truism in the general criti-
cal definition of naturalism. It is Zola's distillation of this idea to
its essentials, to the ritualistic and magical, to, finally, its mythic
origins, which is unique.
The structuralimportance of the mine imagery in the develop-
ment of the sense of place has been much noted elsewhere and
mentioned here in the specific context of the Dantean. The ima-
gery itself, furthermore, is a type of personification which, of
course, justifies the Jungian reading of the text. The personifica-
tion functions otherwise as well in its symbolic, that is, adum-
brative, expression in that the mines become an animistic pre-
sence. Congruent with this, the work of the miner and often his
feelings about his work are ritualistic, for he views himself as
wresting substance from a living creature, as having to subdue or
propitiate it.
These gods of place are countered, ironically, by a resident
trinity of human agents, Etienne, Souvarineand Rasseneur, them-
selves endowed with certain magical or symbolic qualities. A
fourth character, Pluchart, the communist organizer, is similarly
conceived, although he remains external to the community. This
mythicization of setting and characteris not only congruent with
the essential conception of the entire novel but provides the basis
for^Zola'sdamning critique of contemporary political ideology.
Etienne, the hero whose resurrection has already been dis-
cussed, returns from his grave physically transformed into an old
man, white-haired and bent, embodying the magic of his experi-
ence. His antagonist is not Rasseneurthe Publican, the minimalist
who, like Matthew, bears witness and whose socialism, however
humane, is compromised, tepid and ineffective, but Souvarine the
anarchist. Transfixed by the undigested experience of horror and
guilt at the execution of his mistress, Souvarineis characterized
by implacable heartlessness, courting universalcataclysm as nar-
cotic against his pain. The Russian, satanic in his promotion of
the principle of disorder, apparently feels affection for only one
fellow creature, the rabbit named, no doubt in vicious witticism,
Poland.
The leitmotif of Souvarineobsessively stroking his rabbit and
spinning his soulless theories of total destruction evokes the image

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 GERMINAL: MARXISM AS MYTH 253

of the anarchist as diabolist, the warlock with his familiar, whose

skill as an engineer will become the technology of meaningless
destruction. Zola dramatizes the suffering of the miners as the
only salient result of Souvarine'sskillful, camouflaged weakening
of the mineshaft. None of the other promised effects of Souvarine's
theories materializes,as he watches the collapse of the mine, emo-
tionless, from the side of the hill. In no way can Souvarine'sact
be construed as anything but total, pointless calamity.
Its pointlessness is clear in light of the fact that Souvarine is
not determined upon such a course of action, although the theme
of destruction has provided a consistent litany in his anarchist
musings, until after the killing of Poland has served him with a
dinner he unknowingly eats in an act, given his perverseaffection
for the animal, close to cannibalism.24The effect upon him is
clearly tumultuous, and the implication unavoidable that he be-
comes totally unhinged by the experience. The anarchist becomes,
in his representation here, the lunatic as Luddite, and technology
in the hands of a madman, considering the overtones of Zola's
portrait of the soulless, obsessed Souvarine, the practice of the
black arts. Thus represented, the ideological struggle of the nine-
teenth century becomes but a mask for the primal conflict.
Consequently, the characterizationof Souvarineand his instru-
mental role in the mine disaster expresses an implicitly damning
critique of anarchismas an ideology. Certainly, the fundamentally
romantic nature of anarchismis in no way appropriate to Zola's
unrelentingly realistic portraits of human nature, nor, on the other
hand, do its murderoustactics accord with his ultimately compas-
sionate view of men and their vices. The man who can coolly mur-
der and destroy and do so as an article of belief is for Zola in his
representation here both an incarnation of the Old Evil or, in its
contemporary expression, a psychopath.
The portrait of Souvarine, coupled with that of Pluchart, the
Communist organizer, raises a generalized critique of the intel-
lectual instruments of social and political change: that of ideology
as isolated system. With sly wit, Zola renders Pluchartas a dandy;
although Pluchartis not ineffective, his hyperkinetic activity does
not yield a commensurate effect. By definition, Pluchart is an itin-
erant, and his contacts, as made abundantly clear in his meeting
with the Montsou miners, are sparse and fleeting. He works accord-
ing to systematic ideological principle and formulates strategies
and tactics. A cerebralman, he is something of a decadent, not a
vast leap for a French writer of the Eighties to make. If this is a
mildly wicked joke, it is a meaningful one in the context of this
novel in particularand Zola's work in general, which argues the
compelling power of the experience of the community in the af-
fairs of men.

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254 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

It is, then, significant that the trinity which confronts the gods of
place contains two foreigners, Souvarineand Etienne; Pluchart, as
has been mentioned before, is an itinerant and therefore a for-
eigner as well. Rasseneur is the only one native to the community,
which fact in large part clears him on the charge of political compro-
mise: he can no longer stomach the violence where even the faces
of his antagonists are familiar. Unfortunately, this familiarity, which
keeps his humanity alive, neutralizes his political effectiveness.
Souvarine, however, aside from being a foreigner, is also educated
and an engineer. like the company man Négrel, he is managerial
class. Isolated from the workers by both class and communal dif-
ferences, as are both Négrel and Pluchart, Souvarine sees but does
not (and in his case cannot) experience. Only the other foreigner,
Etienne, literally and figuratively becomes immersed in being a
miner in that place. It is this experience, this having been there
that, at the same time it cannot change the simple and necessary
fact of his foreignness, anoints him as revolutionary hero while
his foreignness frees him to act. His decision to join Pluchartis
the only possible or even plausible resolution of what he now
knows. Pluchart and the movement he represents are plausible,
but that is really all.
Locale and characterization, thus mythicized, provide the con-
sistent formal expression of the power of that community through
which will finally emerge the historic will. The argument presented
through this novel is that the power of community is transcendent,
that wealth and the means of producing it are the appropriate
patrimony of the worker and, finally, that all other interests are
foreign, even those supportive of these principles.
Consequently, Zola handles the Internationale as unflinchingly
as he handles any other human institution. As the only apparent
embodiment of historic truth, of that truth expressed through
Zola's forceful vision here, it is only an approximation. Too re-
mote from the soil in which the workers' experience is rooted and
out of which their traditions have grown in time, the movement,
like Pluçhart'sdandyism, is finally an artifact, the only possible
tool at Etienne's hand. Etienne, in his last, shattering vision of
"Des hommes poussaient, une armée noire, vengeresse, qui ger-
mait lentement dans les sillons, grandissantpour les récoltes du
siècle futur, et dont la germination allait faire bientôt éclater la
terre,"25 transcends both the community of miners and the move-
ment which might deliver them. He becomes, at the end of the
novel, the fateful man of history in a world in which he can no
longer act alone.
N.R. CIRILLO• Universityof Illinois, ChicagoCircle

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 GERMINAL: MARXISM AS MYTH 255

NOTES

l.The most comprehensive view of the various Socialist theoreticians Zola read is
offered by Richard Zakarian in his Zola *sGerminal: A Critical Study of its Primary
Sources (Geneve, Droz).
2.This fact was noted most influentially, of course, by Georg Lukacs.
3. Dante Alighieri, "Inferno," La commedia (Firenze, R. Bemporad e figlio, Editori:
1921), I.
4. Dante, I.
5.Emile Zola, Germinal (Paris, Gallimard: 1964), p. 1133.
6. Zola, p. 1133.
7. Zola, p. 1134.
8. Zola, p. 1134.
9. Zola, p. 1134.
lO.Cassell's French Dictionary, 1903.
11. Dante, XVII, 1.66.
12. Dante, III, 1.80.
13. Zola, p. 1134.
14. Zola, p. 1138.
15.Dante,VI,11.94-115.
16. Zola, p. 1141.
1 7. An idea important enough to provide Disraeli with a title for a novel.
18.Rachelle Rosenberg's "The Slaying of the Dragon: An Archetypal Study of Zola's
Germinal (Symposium, 26: 1972) is an interesting reading of the novel on the Jungian
level, although it fetches its dragon somewhat from afar and leaves Zola bereft of a
more recent and intelligible literary past.
19.0ne ought not forget, in this context, to what Nana was hymn.
20. Zola, p. 1507.
21 . From Piu che Vamore.
22.Zola,p. 1585.
23.Attributed to Benedetto Croce.
24. Curiously reminiscent of the revenge motif in the legend of Atreus.
25.Zola,p. 1591.

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