Октав Мирбо: Француз жазушысы, сыншы және журналисінің өмірі мен шығармалары

French writer, art critic and journalist

Octave Mirbeau (16 February 1848 – 16 February 1917) was a French novelist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, journalist and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, whilst still appealing to the literary and artistic avant garde with highly transgressive novels that explored violence, abuse and psychological detachment. His work has been translated into 30 languages.

The grandson of Norman notaries and the son of a doctor, Mirbeau spent his childhood in a village in Normandy, Rémalard, pursuing secondary studies at a Jesuit college in Vannes, which expelled him at the age of fifteen. Two years after the traumatic experience of the 1870 war, he was tempted by a call from the Bonapartist leader Dugué de la Fauconnerie, who hired him as private secretary and introduced him to L'Ordre de Paris. 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 (cf. La Grève des électeurs) 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. As an art critic, he campaigned on behalf of the "great gods nearest to his heart": he sang the praises of Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Félicien Rops Auguste Renoir, Félix Vallotton, and Pierre Bonnard, and was an early advocate of Vincent van Gogh, Camille Claudel, Aristide Maillol, and Maurice Utrillo (cf. his Combats esthétiques, 1993). 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, fr, Valery Larbaud and Léon Werth (cf. his Combats littéraires, 2006).

Mirbeau ghostwrote ten novels, including three for the Swiss writer Dora Melegari. 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 Vinmer (1858 1951), renamed Juliette Roux in the novel. In 1888, Mirbeau published L'Abbé Jules (Abbé Jules), the first pre Freudian novel written under the influence of Dostoyevsky to appear in French literature; the text featured two main characters: l'abbé Jules and Father Pamphile. In Sébastien Roch (1890) (English translation: Sébastien Roch, 2000), Mirbeau purged the traumatic effects of his experience as a student at a Jesuits school in Vannes. In the novel, the 13 year old Sébastien is sexually abused by a priest at the school and the abuse destroys his life.

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 (Lucien), 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), then Les Vingt et un Jours d'un neurasthénique (The twenty one days of a neurasthenic person) (1901). In the process of writing these works, Mirbeau unsettled traditional novelistic conventions, exercising collage techniques, transgressing codes of verisimilitude and fictional credibility, and defying the hypocritical rules of propriety.

In his last two novels, La 628 E8 (1907) – including La Mort de Balzac – and Dingo (1913), he strayed ever further from realism, giving free rein to clinical fantasy elements and casting his cat and his own dog as heroes. These last Mirbeau stories show a complete break with the conventions of realist fiction, also signifying a breakdown of reality.

There has been no interruption in the publication of Mirbeau's works. Yet his immense literary production has largely been known through only three works, and he was considered as literally 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 Époque is emerging. Mirbeau lies buried in the Passy Cemetery, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

Le Calvaire (1886) (Calvary, New York, 1922). L'Abbé Jules (1888) (Abbé Jules, Sawtry, Dedalus, 1996). Sébastien Roch (1890) (Sébastien Roch, Sawtry, Dedalus, 2000). Dans le ciel (1892–1893) (In the Sky). 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 Vingt et un Jours d'un neurasthénique (1901). Dingo (novel) (1913). Un gentilhomme (1919). Les Mémoires de mon ami (1920). Œuvre romanesque, 3 volumes, Buchet/Chastel – Société Octave Mirbeau, 2000–2001, 4 000 pages. Website of Éditions du Boucher, 2003–2004.

Les Mauvais bergers (The Bad Shepherds) (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, 1905.

Dans l'antichambre (Histoire d'une Minute) (1905). La Mort de Balzac (1889). Contes cruels, 2 volumes (1890 and 1900). Contes drôles (1895). Mémoire pour un avocat (2007).

Combats esthétiques, 2 volumes (1893). Premières chroniques esthétiques (1895). Combats littéraires (1906).

La 628 E8 (1907) (Sketches of a journey, London, 1989).