文档介绍：Germinal
by E mile Z ola
作者简介
左拉( ),小说家,生于巴黎。当过
职员和记者,后开始写短篇小说,最初发表的是《尼农的故事》。第
一部重要的长篇小说《黛莱丝·拉甘》年问世后,开始发表长篇
连续性小说《鲁贡玛卡家族》( ),副标题为
“第二帝国时代一个家族的自然史和社会史”,总共包括部系列作
品,其中大受欢迎的有《娜娜》( )、《萌芽》
( )、《土地》( )和《人的兽性》。
年在公开信《我控拆》(’)中支持德雷福斯对自己受
诬的辩解,因而被判处监禁(),但他逃到了英国。德雷福斯被
证明无罪之后,他回国时受到隆重欢迎。
Germinal 1
Introduction
By Havelock Ellis
'GERMINAL' was published in 1885, after occupying Zola during the
previous year. In accordance with his usual custom--but to a greater extent
than with any other of his books except La D¨¦bacle--he accumulated mate-
rial beforehand. For six months he travelled about the coal-mining district
in northern France and Belgium, especially the Borinage around Mons,
note-book in hand. 'He was inquisitive, was that gentleman', miner told
Sherard who visited the neighbourhood at a later period and found that the
miners in every village knew Germinal. That was a tribute of admiration
the book deserved, but it was never one of Zola's most popular novels; it
was neither amusing enough nor outrageous enough to attract the multitude.
Yet Germinal occupies a place among Zola's works which is constantly
ing more assured, so that to some critics it even begins to seem the
only book of his that in the end may survive. In his own time, as we know,
the accredited critics of the day could find no condemnation severe enough
for Zola. i¨¨re attacked him perpetually with a fury that seemed
inexhaustible; Sch¨¦rer could not even bear to hear his name mentioned;
Anatole France, though he lived to relent, thought it would have been bet-
ter if he had never been born. Even at that time, however, there were critics
who inclined to view Germinal more favourably. Thus Faguet, who was the
recognized academic critic of the end of the last century, while he held that
posterity would be unable to understand how Zola could ever have been
popular, yet recognized him as in Germinal the heroic representative of
democracy, parable in his power of descr