Germinal by Roger Pearson (review)

Abstract

MLR, 100.3, 2005 825 also described in great detail and are wonderfully complemented by the photographs taken while out in the Surrey countryside. Finally, as well as providing a valuable record of Zola's artistic, intellectual, and leisure pursuits, the Notes offer an often amusing insight into the peculiar customs of Victorian England as seen through the eyes of a French observer. We are not surprised to learn that food in particular caused Zola some trouble. Known for his large and enthusiastic appetite, the novelist was rendered franklymiserable by English attempts to cook meat and potatoes. Royal Holloway, University of London Hannah Thompson Germinal. By Emile Zola. Trans. by Roger Pearson. London: Penguin. 2004. xlvi + 546pp. ?7.99- ISBN 0-140-44742-3. Roger Pearson's new English translation of Emile Zola's Germinal (1885) represents a thoroughly rigorous and often extremely well-written addition to the rapidly expanding corpus of such works. Before embarking upon the narrative proper, the reader receives, by way of an introduction of thirty-seven pages, a preliminary grounding in the historical and literary context surrounding the publication of the French ori? ginal. Further useful supplementary material is offeredat the close of the text in the form of a five-page glossary of mining terms. In short, this scrupulous translation is as reader-friendly as it is highly literate. Unfortunately, these virtues also serve to obscure some of the rather sharper asperities characterizing the stylistic texture of the original. For example, much of the rather strenuous and carefully weighted punctuation of the latter is simply jettisoned in order to alleviate the target text of any potentially cumbersome pauses or intercalations. What price a comma indeed amid the welter of detail comprising a Zola novel? Correspondingly, one cannot help but feel that much of the abrasion, wounding, and sheer corporeal exposure pervading the narrative of Germinal is somewhat too decorously glossed over by Pearson's literary fluency: examples of this include the translation of 'Ah! Une bonne chance encore, cette blessure' (Germinal, ed. by Henri Mitterand (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), p. 50i)as 'Ah! what a marvellous stroke of fortune this menstruation' (p. 445); A cette tension cerebrale' (p. 343) as 'In the course of his mental journey' (p. 287); and 'Cela se peignait dans son crane' (p. 427) as 'He could see the whole thing in his mind's eye' (p. 368). Zola is nothing if not a thoroughly physical writer,and Pearson's periphrastic euphemisms tend to convey this aspect of his composition all too timorously. Similar reserve is shown over the translation of dialogue. Although Zola makes no attempt to duplicate specific forms of argot or dialect in Germinal as he does in L'Assommoir, he nevertheless remains close to an authentically colloquial register in rendering the miners' speech. Unfortunately, no such consistency is to be found in Pearson's translation, which tends to swing erratically from demotic expostulation to a thoroughly 'Senior Common Room' mode of utterance (Catherine, for example, is caught referringto herself as a 'useless specimen' (p. 4i4) = 'quellepatraque' (p. 472); La Maheude bemoans the 'dreadful weather' (p. 86) = 'temps de chien' (p. 133); the benighted sentries guarding the mine are mocked as 'those silly soldiers in rows' (p. 429) = 'andouilles de lignards' (p. 488)). By way of compensation, perhaps, much of the dialogue is also peppered with gratuitous vulgarity. All of which prompts one to wonder how many rude words it takes to render the bloody speech of a bloody miner? Tungsten bloody carbide, indeed! In conclusion, Roger Pearson's text can be said to exemplify many ofthe strengths and weaknesses of what might be called 'the scholarly translation' (the translator is a Professor of French at the University of Oxford). It is at once both fluent and 826 Reviews flawed; meticulously researched in its rendering of descriptive detail and yet curiously deficient in its search for stylistic vigour. Not a bad addition to the English-language Garden of Zola for all that. University of Durham Ian Tulloch Proust et le langage religieux: la cathedraleprofane. By Stephane Chaudier. (Re? cherches proustiennes, 2) Paris: Champion. 2004. 549 pp. ?85. ISBN 2-74530768 -1. A book that studies the religious references...