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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Germinal is an almost perfect example of what Zola occasionally called his “lie”—his paradoxical manner of achieving at one and the same time both a convincing documentary realism and a strongly symbolic and subjective presentation of reality. Nowhere can this be more plainly seen than in his brilliant, often surprising, use of color. Obviously he owes much in this as in other respects to such predecessors as Flaubert, but he also, more than has generally been realized, shares in the spirit of his own period. While his color terms and images always have a naturalistic basis, the art with which he distributes them throughout the narrative is quite as stylized and patterned in its own way as a canvas by Cézanne. His symbolic treatment of color, on the other hand, suggests affinities with the symbolists, who were rising to a certain prominence in Paris in 1884, the year Germinal was written. Not only does he simplify and organize his colors into a scheme consistent with his dramatic subject, a great strike; he also invests them like leitmotifs with associations expressive of all three levels of meaning of the novel—the dramatic cadre of the miners' strike, the prophetic historical étude of the struggle between capital and labor, and, finally, the underlying philosophical vision of man and nature. Often he gives a single color or group of colors at least three separate meanings which are interwoven and interrelated within the powerful unity of the whole. And, in the process, he transforms, in this and other ways, the colors of ordinary reality into the often far more intense, significant, and emotive colors of dreams, hallucinations, and apocalyptic visions.
1 Cf. Zola's letter to Henry Céard on the nature of his “Mensonge” in Germinal: “Nous mentons tous plus ou moins, mais quelle est la mécanique et la mentalité de notre Mensonge? Or—c'est ici que je m'abuse peut-être—je crois encore que je mens pour mon compte dans le sens de la vérité. J'ai l'hypertrophie du détail vrai, le saut dans les étoiles sur le tremplin de l'observation exacte. La vérité monte d'un coup d'aile jusqu'au symbole.” (Correspondance, Les Œuvres complètes, ii, ed. Maurice Le Blond, Paris: Bernouard, 1927–29, 637.)
2 Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), MS, Fonds français, Nouvelles acquisitions, 10308, fol. 408. Zola's working notes for Germinal and the autograph are contained in MSS. 10305–308—hereafter cited in the text.
3 The color terms mentioned in Germinal, together with the number of times that they and closely related forms including derivatives ending in -âtre occur, are as follows: noir (156), rouge (86), blanc (80), bleu (32), jaune (30), vert (30), gris (20), rose (18), or (17), sanglant (17), blond (15), livide (11), roux (11), brun (9), terreux (7), pourpre (6), violet (5), argent (2), fauve (2), rouille (2), and one each of acier, ambre, azur, bai, blafard, bronze, carmin, châtain, cuivre rouge, plomb, vermeil, and vermillon. There is a surprising correspondence, with respect to the relative frequency with which colors are named, between Germinal and Salammbô, where Zola particularly admired Flaubert as a colorist. For data on color imagery in Salammbô, see Arthur Bieler, “La couleur dans Salammbô,” FR, xxxiii (Feb. 1960), pp. 365–366.
4 Germinal, Les Œuvres complètes, Bernouard edition, p. 96. Subsequent references to Germinal will be given in the text.
5 Correspondance, ii, 636.
6 Reproduced by Le Blond in the Bernouard edition of La Fortune des Rougon, p. 355.
7 Ibid., p. 354.
8 Germinal was, as its name implies, the month of seed (21 March-19 April) in the French Revolutionary Calendar. The 12th of Germinal of the year iii (1 April 1795) was, as noted by Zola in MS. 10308, fol. 415, marked by great hunger riots and popular manifestations.
9 Traces of Zola's personal preferences in colors as reported by his friend Dr. Edouard Toulouse may possibly be found in certain minor details, e.g., the juxtaposition of blue and yellow houses, p. 97, or the description of Tartare and Côte-Verte, p. 316. “Dans le monde des couleurs, il préfère la palette rouge, jaune et vert de Delacroix, les nuances fanées, et dans les tons complémentaires, le jaune uni au bleu.” (Toulouse, Enquêtemédico-psychologique sur les rapports de la supériorité intellectuelle avec la névropathie. i. Introduction générale: Emile Zola, Paris: Société d'Editions Scientifiques, 1896, p. 259.)
10 Guy Robert, “La Terre” d'Emile Zola: Étude historique et critique (Paris, 1952), pp. 383 ff.
11 Enquête, pp. 117, 179, 204.
12 See Jean Seznec, “Literary Inspiration in Van Gogh,” Magazine of Art, xliii (Dec. 1950), p. 287. Van Gogh idolized Zola, whose works not infrequently influenced his paintings.