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WORK

[TRAVAIL]

BY

ÉMILE ZOLA


TRANSLATED BY

ERNEST ALFRED VIZETELLY


LONDON

CHATTO & WINDUS

1901




PREFACE


'Work' is the second book of the new series which M. Zola began with
'Fruitfulness,' and which he hopes to complete with 'Truth' and
'Justice.' I should much have liked to discuss here in some detail
several of the matters which M. Zola brings forward in this instalment
of his literary testament, but unfortunately the latter part of the
present translation has been made by me in the midst of great bodily
suffering, and I have not now the strength to do as I desired. I will
only say, therefore, that 'Work' embraces many features. It is, first,
an exposition of M. Zola's gospel of work, as the duty of every man
born into the world and the sovereign cure for many ills--a gospel
which he has set forth more than once in the course of his numerous
writings, and which will be found synthetised, so to say, in a paper
called 'Life and Labour' translated by me for the 'New Review' some
years ago.[1] Secondly, 'Work' deals with the present-day conditions
of society so far as those conditions are affected by Capital and
Labour. And, thirdly and particularly, it embraces a scheme of social
reorganisation and regeneration in which the ideas of Charles Fourier,
the eminent philosopher, are taken as a basis and broadened and adapted
to the needs of a new century. Some may regard this scheme as being
merely the splendid dream of a poet (the book certainly abounds
in symbolism), but all must