Octave Mirbeau

Octave Mirbeau (February 16, 1848 in Trévières - February 16, 1917) was a French journalist, art critic, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (881x1124, 183 KB) Octave Mirbeau Source: scanned myself Bibliothèque Nationale File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Octave Mirbeau Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (881x1124, 183 KB) Octave Mirbeau Source: scanned myself Bibliothèque Nationale File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Octave Mirbeau Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added... February 16 is the 47th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Year 1848 (MDCCCXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a leap year starting on Monday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... Trévières is a commune of the Calvados département, in the Basse-Normandie région, in north-western France. ... February 16 is the 47th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Year 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar (see: 1917 Julian calendar). ... This does not cite its references or sources. ... An art critic is normally a person who have a speciality in giving reviews mainly of the types of fine art you will find on display. Typically the art critic will go to an art exhibition where works of art are displayed in the traditional way in localities especially made... A pamphleteer is a historical term for someone who creates or distributes pamphlets in order to get people to vote for their favourite politician or to articulate a particular political ideology. ... A novel is an extended work of written, narrative, prose fiction, usually in story form; the writer of a novel is a novelist. ... Template:Unsourced A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is someone who writes dramatic literature or drama. ... A work similar to Marcel Duchamps Fountain Avant garde (written avant-garde) is a French phrase, one of many French phrases used by English speakers. ...

Biography

Aesthetical and political struggles

After his debut in journalism in the service of the Bonapartists, and his debut in literature when he worked as a ghostwriter, Mirbeau began to publish under his own name. Thereafter, he wrote in order to express his own ethical principles and aesthetic values. A supporter of the anarchist cause and fervent supporter of Alfred Dreyfus, Mirbeau embodied the intellectual who involved himself in civic issues. Independent of all parties, Mirbeau believed that one’s primary duty was to remain lucid. In French political history, Bonapartists were monarchists who desired a French Empire under the House of Bonaparte, the Corsican family of Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon I of France) and his nephew Louis (Napoleon III of France). ... A ghostrider is a professional writer who is paid to write books, articles, stories, or reports which are officially credited to another person. ... Ethics is a general term for what is often described as the science (study) of morality. In philosophy, ethical behavior is that which is good or right. ... Aesthetics (or esthetics) (from the Greek word αισθητική) is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty. ... Anarchism is a generic term describing various political philosophies and social movements that advocate the elimination of hierarchy and imposed authority. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

As an art critic, he campaigned on behalf of the “great gods nearest to his heart”: he sang the praises of Rodin, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Auguste Renoir, Félix Vallotton, and Pierre Bonnard, and was an early advocate of Vincent Van Gogh, Camille Claudel, Aristide Maillol, and Maurice Utrillo (cf. Combats esthétiques). Rodins The Burghers of Calais in Calais, France. ... Claude Monet also known as Oscar-Claude Monet or Claude Oscar Monet (November 14, 1840 – December 5, 1926)[1] was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movements philosophy of expressing ones perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein... --88. ... Paul Cézanne (January 19, 1839 – October 22, 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. ... Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (June 7, 1848 – May 9, 1903) was a leading Post-Impressionist artist. ... Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841 _ December 3, 1919) was a preeminent French painter. ... Félix Vallotton was a Franco-Swiss painter, engraver, illustrator and writer (Lausanne 1865-Paris 1925). ... The Dining Room in the Country Pierre Bonnard (October 3, 1867 – January 23, 1947) was a French painter and printmaker. ... Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch pronunciation: ) (March 30, 1853 in Zundert – July 29, 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise) was a Dutch draughtsman and painter, classified as a Post-Impressionist. ... Camille Claudel (1864-1943) Camille Claudel (December 8, 1864 – October 19, 1943) was a French sculptor and graphic artist. ... Aristide Maillol. ... Maurice Utrillo, born Maurice Valadon, (December 25, 1883 - November 5, 1955) was a French painter who specialized in cityscapes. ...

As a literary critic and early member of Académie Goncourt, he 'discovered' Maurice Maeterlinck and Marguerite Audoux and admired Remy de Gourmont, Marcel Schwob, Léon Bloy, Georges Rodenbach, Alfred Jarry, Charles-Louis Philippe, Émile Guillaumin, Valery Larbaud and Léon Werth (cf. his Combats littéraires). The Académie Goncourt is a literary organization based in Paris, France that was created by French writer and publisher Edmond de Goncourt in opposition to the then existing policies towards writers by the Académie française. ... Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, Belgian author Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (August 29, 1862 - May 6, 1949) was a Belgian poet, playwright, and essayist. ... Marguerite Audoux (1863-1937) was a French novelist. ... Rémy de Gourmont (April 4, 1858 - September 27, 1915) was a French Symbolist poet and influential critic. ... Marcel Schwob, French writer, was born in Chaville on 23 August 1867, died on 12 February 1905. ... Léon Bloy, 1887 Léon Bloy (Périgueux, July 11, 1846 - Bourg-la-Reine, November 2, 1917) was a French novelist, essayist, and poet. ... Georges Raymond Constantin Rodenbach (born July 16, 1855 in Tournai, Belgium; died December 25, 1898 in Paris) was a Belgian Symbolist poet. ... Alfred Jarry Alfred Jarry (September 8, 1873 – November 1, 1907) was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mothers side. ... Valéry Larbaud (29 August 1881 – 2 February 1957) was a French writer. ... Léon Werth (1878-1955) was a French writer and art critic, friend of Octave Mirbeau, then of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. ...

Mirbeau's novels

Autobiographical novels

After authoring ten ghostwritten novels, he made his own literary debut with Le Calvaire (Calvary, 1886), in which writing allowed him to overcome the traumatic effects of his devastating liaison with the ill-reputed Judith Vimmer, renamed Juliette Roux in the novel. In 1888, Mirbeau published L'Abbé Jules, the first pre-Freudian novel written under the influence of Dostoyevsky to appear in French literature; the text featured two main interesting characters: l’abbé Jules and Father Pamphile. In Sébastien Roch (1890), Mirbeau purged the traumatic effects of his experience as a student during his sojourn among the Jesuits of Vannes. The violence he suffered there probably included rape by priests. This article is about a ghostwriter, the type of writer. ... 1886 (MDCCCLXXXVI) is a common year starting on Friday (click on link to calendar) // Events January 18 - Modern field hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England. ... Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event. ... 1888 (MDCCCLXXXVIII) is a leap year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. ... Sigmund Freud His famous couch Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 - September 23, 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology, a movement that popularized the theory that unconscious motives control much behavior. ... Fyodor Dostoevsky. ... The Society of Jesus (Latin: Societas Iesu), commonly known as the Jesuits, is a Roman Catholic religious order. ... In the old city centre Harbour to cathedral Vannes (Breton: Gwened) is a town and commune located in the Morbihan département, in Brittany, in the west of France. ...

Crisis of the novel

Mirbeau then underwent a grave existential and literary crisis, yet during this time, he still published in serial form a pre-existentialist novel about the artist’s fate, Dans le ciel (In the Sky), introducing the figure of a painter directly modeled on Van Gogh. In the aftermath of the Dreyfus Affair - which exacerbated Mirbeau’s pessimism - he published two novels judged to be scandalous by self-styled paragons of virtue : Le Jardin des supplices (Torture Garden (1899) and Le Journal d'une femme de chambre (Diary of a Chambermaid) (1900). In these works, Mirbeau unsettled traditional novelistic conventions, practising the technique of collage, transgressing the code of verisimilitude and fictional credibility, and defying the hypocritical rules of propriety. Existentialism is a philosophical movement emphasizing individualism, individual freedom, and subjectivity. ... van gogh is a piece of shit Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Netherlands artist. ... The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal which divided France during the 1890s and early 1900s. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Year 1899 (MDCCCXCIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar). ... Diary of a Chambermaid is the title of a play written by Andre Heuse, Andre de Lorde, and Thielly Nores. ... 1900 (MCM) was an exceptional common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar, but a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. ... Collage (From the French: , to stick) is regarded as a work of visual arts made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...

Death of the novel

In his last two novels - La 628-E8 (1907) and Dingo (1913) (Dingo (novel)), he strayed ever further from realism, giving free rein to fantasy elements and casting his car and his own dog as heroes. Because of the indeterminacy of their genre affiliation, thesa last Mirbeau’s stories show how completely he had broken with the conventions of realist fiction. 1907 (MCMVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Year 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... Dingo is a novel by the French novelist and playwright Octave Mirbeau (1913). ... Look up realism, realist, realistic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Fantasy is a genre of art that uses magic and other supernatural forms as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. ...

Mirbeau's theatre

In the theatre, Mirbeau experienced world-wide acclaim with Les affaires sont les affaires (Business is business 1903) - his classical comedy of manners and characters in the tradition of Molière. Here Mirbeau featured the character of Isidore Lechat, predecessor of the modern master of business intrigue, a product of the new world, a figure who makes money from everything and spreads his tentacles out over the world. Business is business (in french, Les affaires sont les affaires) is a french comedy in three acts, by the novelist and playwright Octave Mirbeau, performed in april 1903 on the stage of Comédie-Française, in Paris, and world-wide acclaimed, especially in Russia, Germany and United States. ... The comedy of manners satirizes the manners and affectations of a social class, often represented by stock characters, such as the miles gloriosus in ancient times, the fop and the rake during the Restoration, or an old person pretending to be young. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

In 1908 - at the end of a long legal and media battle - Mirbeau saw his play Le Foyer (Home) performed by the Comédie-Française. In this work, he broached a new taboo subject, the economic and sexual exploitation of adolescents in a home that pretended to be a charitable one. 1908 (MCMVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Published under the title of Farces et moralités (1904) were six small one act plays that were themselves considered extremely innovative. Here Mirbeau can be seen as anticipating the theatre of Bertolt Brecht, Marcel Aymé, Harold Pinter, and Eugène Ionesco. He calls language itself into question, demystifying law, ridiculing the discourse of politicians, and making fun of the language of love. Year 1904 (MCMIV) was a leap year starting on a Friday (see link for calendar). ... A one act play, or more commonly one act, is a short play that takes place in one act or usually one scene as opposed to more common plays that takes place over a number of scenes in one or more acts. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Marcel Aymé (March 29, 1902 - October 14, 1967) was a French novelist, childrens writer and humour writer. ... Harold Pinter, CH, CBE (born 10 October 1930) is a British playwright, screenwriter, poet, actor, director, author, and political activist, best known for his plays The Birthday Party (1957), The Caretaker (1959), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), and for his screenplay adaptations of novels by others, such as The... Eugène Ionesco Eugène Ionesco, born Eugen Ionescu, (November 26, 1909 – March 29, 1994) was one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the absurd. ...

Posthumous fame

Mirbeau has never been forgotten, and there has been no interruption in the publication of his works. Yet his immense literary production has largely been known through only three works, and he was considered as literarily and politically incorrect.

But, more recently, Mirbeau has been rediscovered and presented in a new light. A fuller appreciation of the role he played in the political, literary, and artistic world of la Belle Epoque is emerging. The Belle poque, or beautiful era, was a period in Frances history that began during the late 19th century and lasted until World War I. Occurring at the midpoint of the Third Republic, the Belle poque was considered a golden time of beauty, innovation, and peace between France and...

Works

Novels

• Le Calvaire (1886) (Calvary, New York, 1922).
• L'Abbé Jules (1888) (Abbé Jules, Sawtry, 1996).
• Sébastien Roch (1890) (Sébastien Roch, Sawtry, 2000).
• Dans le ciel (1892-1893) (In the sky, translation to be published).
• Le Jardin des supplices (1899) (Torture Garden, New York, 1931; The Garden of Tortures, London, 1938) .
• le Journal d'une femme de chambre (1900) (A Chambermaid's diary, New York, 1900 ; The Diary of a Lady's Maid, London, 1903 ; Célestine, being the diary of a chambermaid, New York, 1930 ; Diary of a chambermaid, New York, 1945).
• Les 21 jours d'un neurasthénique (1901).
• La 628-E8 (1907) (Sketches of a journey, London, 1989).
• Dingo (novel) (1913).
• Œuvre romanesque, 3 volumes, Buchet/Chastel – Société Octave Mirbeau, 2000-2001, 4 000 pages. Website of Éditions du Boucher, 2003-2004.

To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The Diary of a Chambermaid (French: Le Journal dune femme de chambre) is a 1900 decadent novel by Octave Mirbeau, published during the Dreyfus Affair. ... Dingo is a novel by the French novelist and playwright Octave Mirbeau (1913). ...

Théâtre

• Les Mauvais bergers (The Bad Spheperds) (1897).
• Les affaires sont les affaires (1903) (Business is business, New York, 1904).
• Farces et moralités, six morality plays (1904) (Scruples, New York, 1923 ; The Epidemic, Bloomington, 1949 ; The Lovers, translation coming soon).
• Le Foyer (1908) (Charity).
• Dialogues tristes, Eurédit, 2005.

Business is business (in french, Les affaires sont les affaires) is a french comedy in three acts, by the novelist and playwright Octave Mirbeau, performed in april 1903 on the stage of Comédie-Française, in Paris, and world-wide acclaimed, especially in Russia, Germany and United States. ... Morality plays are a type of theatrical allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes who try to prompt him to choose a Godly life over one of evil. ...

Shorts stories

• Dans l'antichambre (Histoire d'une Minute) (1905).
• Contes cruels, 2 volumes (1990 and 2000).
• Contes drôles (1995).

Art chronicles

• Combats esthétiques, 2 volumes (1993).
• Combats littéraires (2006).

Political and social chronicles

• Combats politiques (1990).
• L'Affaire Dreyfus (1991).
• Lettres de l'Inde (1991).
• L'Amour de la femme vénale (1994).
• Chroniques du Diable (1995).

Correspondence

• Lettres à Alfred Bansard des Bois (1989)
• Correspondance avec Rodin (1988), avec Monet (1990), avec Pissarro (1990), avec Jean Grave (1994).
• Correspondance générale, 2 volumes already published (2003-2005).

References, further reading

• Reginald Carr, Anarchism in France - The Case Octave Mirbeau, Manchester, 1977.
• Pierre Michel and J.-F Nivet, Octave Mirbeau, l'imprécateur au cœur fidèle, Séguier, 1990, 1020 pages.
• Pierre Michel, Les Combats d'Octave Mirbeau, Annales littéraires de l'université de Besançon, 1995, 386 pages.
• Christopher Lloyd, Mirbeau's fictions, Durham, 1996.
• Enda McCaffrey, Octave Mirbeau’s literary intellectual evolution as a french writer (1880-1914), Edwin Mellen Press, 2000, 246 pages.
• Samuel Lair, Mirbeau et le mythe de la nature, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2004, 361 pages.
• Pierre Michel, Octave Mirbeau et le roman, Société Octave Mirbeau, 2005, 276 pages.
• Pierre Michel, Bibliographie d'Octave Mirbeau, Société Octave Mirbeau, 2006, 441 pages.
• Pierre Michel, Albert Camus et Octave Mirbeau, Société Octave Mirbeau, Angers, 2005, 68 pages.
• Pierre Michel, Jean-Paul Sartre et Octave Mirbeau, Société Octave Mirbeau, Angers, 2005, 67 pages.
• Pierre Michel, Octave Mirbeau, Henri Barbusse et l’enfer, 51 pages.
• Robert Ziegler, The Nothing Machine : The Fiction of Octave Mirbeau, Rodopi, Amsterdam – Kenilworth, september 2007.
• Cahiers Octave Mirbeau, n° 1 to n° 14, 1994-2007, 5 000 pages.

External links

• (French) Website of Société Octave Mirbeau. More than 400 essays about Mirbeau, in twenty-one different languages.
• (French) Website of Éditions du Boucher, Fifteen of Mirbeau's novels
• (French) Pierre Michel’s website. 6 books about Mirbeau are in line, and more than 130 essays.
• (French) Website of Fonds Mirbeau, in Angers University Library.
• (French) Audio book (mp3): Incipit of 21 jours d'un neurasthénique, written in 1901.
• Octave Mirbeau, The love of a venal woman.
• Mirbeau's page on anarchist website.
• Libcom.org/history: Octave Mirbeau political biography, focusing on his anarchism.

Quotations

• “During Humankind’s long centuries societies have risen and fallen, all alike in this one fact which rules all history: the great are protected, the small are crushed.”

• “Sheep run to the slaughterhouse, silent and hopeless, but at least sheep never vote for the butcher who kills them or the people who devour them. More beastly than any beast, more sheepish than any sheep, the voter names his own executioner and chooses his own devourer, and for this precious “right” a revolution was fought.”

• “The greatest danger of bombs is in the explosion of stupidity that they provoke.”

• “When one tears away the veils and shows them naked, people’s souls give off such a pungent smell of decay.”

• “Each footstep taken in this society bristles with privileges, and is marked with a bloodstain; each turn of the government machinery grinds the tumbling, gasping flesh of the poor; and tears are running from everywhere in the impenetrable night of suffering. Facing these endless murders and continuous tortures, what's the meaning of society, this crumbling wall, this collapsing staircase?”

• “Children, by nature, are keen, passionate and curious. What was referred to as laziness is often merely an awakening of sensitivity, a psychological inability to submit to certain absurd duties, and a natural result of the distorted, unbalanced education given to them. This laziness, which leads to an insuperable reluctance to learn, is, contrary to appearances, sometimes proof of intellectual superiority and a condemnation of the teacher.”

• “Dead trees enclosed the bodies of men and women, violently distorted and subjected to hideous and shameful tortures.”

• “Desire can attain the darkest human terror and give an actual ideal of hell and its horror.”

• “Every intellectual effort is bent towards committing the most diversified violations upon the human being.”

• “Honesty is negative and sterile; it is ignorant of the correct evaluation of appetite and ambition – the only powers through which you can found anything durable.”

• “I feel something like a powerful oppression, like an immense fatigue after marching across fever-laden jungles, or by the shores of deadly lakes…And I am flooded by discouragement, so that it seems I shall never be able to escape from myself again.”

• “I had, at that moment, another soul – an almost divine soul, a creative and sacrificial soul.”

• “It is no exaggeration to say that the main aim of upper-class existence is to enjoy the filthiest of amusements.”
• “It isn’t dying that’s sad. It’s living when you’re not happy.”

• “Murder is born in love, and love attains the greatest intensity in murder.”

• “Nature’s constantly screaming with all its shapes and scents: love each other! Love each other! Do as the flowers. There’s only love.”

• “Schools are miniature universes. They encompass, on a child’s scale, the same kind of domination and repression as the most despotically organised societies. A similar sort of injustice and comparable baseness preside over their choice of idols to elevate and martyrs to torment.”

• “There is a diabolical streak in me, a troublesome and inexplicable perversity.”

• “There is something more mysteriously attractive than beauty: it is corruption.”

• “The universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden…Passions, greed, hatred, and lies; social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering.”

• “The worship of money is the lowest of all human emotions, but it is shared not only by the bourgeoisie but also by the great majority of us…Little people, humble people, even those who are practically penniless. And I, with all my indignation, all my passion for destruction, I, too, am not free of it. I who am oppressed by wealth, who realise it to be the source of all misery, all my vices and hatred, all the bitterest humiliations that I have to suffer, all my impossible dreams and all the endless torment of my existence, still, all the time, as soon as I find myself in the presence of a rich person, I cannot help looking up to him, as some exceptional and splendid being, a kind of marvelous divinity, and in spite of myself, stronger than either my will of my reason, I feel rising from the very depths of my being, a sort of incense of admiration for this wealthy creature, who is all too often as stupid as he is pitiless. Isn’t it crazy? And why... why?”

• “To take something from a person and keep it for oneself: that is robbery. To take something from one person and then turn it over to another in exchange for as much money as you can get: that is business. Robbery is so much more stupid, since it is satisfied with a single, frequently dangerous profit; whereas in business it can be doubled without danger.”

• “You’re obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That’s the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.”