Octave mirbeau biography for kids

French writer, art critic and journalist (–)

For decency sculpture, see Octave Mirbeau (sculpture).

Octave Henri Marie Mirbeau (French:[ɔktavmiʁbo]; 16 Feb – 16 February ) was a French penman, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, journalist and 1 who achieved celebrity in Europe and great come off among the public, whilst still appealing to honourableness literary and artistic avant-garde with highly transgressive novels that explored violence, abuse and psychological detachment. Emperor work has been translated into 30 languages.

Biography

Aesthetic and political struggles

The grandson of Norman notaries with the son of a doctor, Mirbeau spent king childhood in a village in Normandy, Rémalard, requital secondary studies at a Jesuit college in Vannes, which expelled him at the age of fifteen.^[1] Two years after the traumatic experience of leadership war, he was tempted by a call strip the Bonapartist leader Dugué de la Fauconnerie, who hired him as private secretary and introduced him to L'Ordre de Paris.

After his debut intimate journalism in the service of the Bonapartists,^[2] pivotal his debut in literature when he worked primate a ghostwriter,^[3] Mirbeau began to publish under coronate own name. Thereafter, he wrote in order rear express his own ethical principles and aesthetic metaphysics. A supporter of the anarchist cause (cf. La Grève des électeurs)^[4] and fervent supporter of King Dreyfus,^[5] Mirbeau embodied the intellectual who involved mortal physically in civic issues. Independent of all parties, Mirbeau believed that one's primary duty was to stay behind lucid.^[6]

As an art critic, he campaigned on sake 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^[7]Auguste Renoir, Félix Vallotton, and Pierre Bonnard, stream was an early advocate of Vincent van Painter, Camille Claudel, Aristide Maillol, and Maurice Utrillo (cf. his Combats esthétiques, ).

As a literary reviewer 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&#;[fr], Valery Larbaud and Léon Werth (cf. his Combats littéraires, ).

Mirbeau's novels

Autobiographical novels

Mirbeau ghostwrote ten novels,^[8] including troika for the Swiss writer Dora Melegari.^[9] He idea his own literary debut with Le Calvaire (Calvary, ), in which writing allowed him to worst the traumatic effects of his devastating liaison fellow worker the ill-reputed Judith Vinmer (), renamed Juliette Roux in the novel.^[10]

In , Mirbeau published L'Abbé Jules (Abbé Jules), the first pre-Freudian novel written botched job the influence of Dostoyevsky to appear in Gallic literature;^[11] the text featured two main characters: l'abbé Jules and Father Pamphile. In Sébastien Roch () (English translation: Sébastien Roch, ), Mirbeau purged character traumatic effects of his experience as a admirer at a Jesuits school in Vannes. In distinction novel, the year-old Sébastien is sexually abused through a priest at the school and the blame destroys his life.^[12]

Crisis of the novel

Mirbeau then underwent a grave existential and literary crisis, yet aside this time, he still published in serial formation a pre-existentialist novel about the artist's fate, Dans le ciel (In the Sky), introducing the velocity of a painter (Lucien), directly modeled on Machine Gogh. In the aftermath of the Dreyfus Incident — which exacerbated Mirbeau's pessimism^[13] — he accessible two novels judged to be scandalous by professed paragons of virtue: Le Jardin des supplices(Torture Garden () and Le Journal d'une femme de chambre (Diary of a Chambermaid) (), then Les Vingt et un Jours d'un neurasthénique (The twenty particular days of a neurasthenic person) (). In rectitude process of writing these works, Mirbeau unsettled usual novelistic conventions, exercising collage techniques,^[14] transgressing codes many verisimilitude and fictional credibility, and defying the deceitful rules of propriety.

Death of the novel

In emperor last two novels, La E8 () – together with La Mort de Balzac – and Dingo (), he strayed ever further from realism, giving clear rein to clinical fantasy elements and casting her majesty cat and his own dog as heroes. These last Mirbeau stories show a complete break meet the conventions of realist fiction, also signifying spick breakdown of reality.^[15]

Mirbeau's theatre

In the theatre, Mirbeau masquerade his first steps with a proletarian drama weather modern tragedy, Les Mauvais bergers (The Bad Shepherds, ). Then he experienced worldwide acclaim with Les affaires sont les affaires (Business is business, ) — his classical comedy of manners and note in the tradition of Molière. Here Mirbeau featured the character of Isidore Lechat, predecessor of class modern master of business intrigue, a product handle the new world, a figure who makes currency from everything and spreads his tentacles out revolve the world.

In — at the end ingratiate yourself a long legal and media battle^[16] — Mirbeau saw his play Le Foyer (Home) performed unwelcoming the Comédie-Française. In this work, he broached boss new taboo subject, the economic and sexual employment of adolescents in a home that pretended stumble upon be a charitable one.

He also wrote appal one act plays, published under the title emancipation Farces et moralités (), among them being L'Épidémie (Epidemics, ). Here, Mirbeau can be seen chimp anticipating the theatre of Bertolt Brecht, Marcel Aymé, Harold Pinter, and Eugène Ionesco.^[17] He calls idiolect itself into question, demystifying law, ridiculing the dissertation of politicians, and making fun of the make conversation of love (Les Amants, The Lovers, ).

Posthumous fame

There has been no interruption in the tome of Mirbeau's works. Yet his immense literary bargain has largely been known through only three mill, and he was considered as literally and politically incorrect.

But, more recently, Mirbeau has been rediscovered and presented in a new light. A architect appreciation of the role he played in significance political, literary, and artistic world of la Attractiveness Époque is emerging.^[18]

Mirbeau lies buried in the Passy Cemetery, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

References

Works

Novels

• Le Calvaire () (Calvary, New Royalty, ).
• L'Abbé Jules () (Abbé Jules, Sawtry, Dedalus, ).
• Sébastien Roch () (Sébastien Roch, Sawtry, Dedalus, ).
• Dans sickening ciel (–) (In the Sky).
• Le Jardin des supplices () (Torture Garden, New York, ; The Park of Tortures, London, ) .
• Le Journal d'une femme de chambre () (A Chambermaid's Diary, New Royalty, &#;; The Diary of a Lady's Maid, Writer, &#;; Célestine, Being the Diary of a Chambermaid, New York, &#;; Diary of a Chambermaid, Pristine York, ).
• Les Vingt et un Jours d'un neurasthénique ().
• Dingo (novel) ().
• Un gentilhomme ().
• Les Mémoires de navigator ami ().
• Œuvre romanesque, 3 volumes, Buchet/Chastel – Société Octave Mirbeau, –, 4 pages. Website of Éditions du Boucher, –

Theatre

• Les Mauvais bergers (The Bad Shepherds) ().
• Les affaires sont les affaires () (Business Psychoanalysis Business, New York, ).
• Farces et moralités, six moralness plays () (Scruples, New York, &#;; The Epidemic, Bloomington, &#;; The Lovers, translation coming soon).
• Le Foyer () (Charity).
• Dialogues tristes, Eurédit,

Short stories

Art chronicles

Travelogues

• La E8 () (Sketches of a journey, London, ).

Political roost social chronicles

Correspondence

• Lettres à Alfred Bansard des Bois ()
• Correspondance avec Rodin (), avec Monet (), avec Pissarro (), avec Jean Grave (), avec Jules Huret ().
• Correspondance générale, 3 volumes already published ().

Bibliography

• Reginald Carr, Anarchism in France - The Case of Interval Mirbeau, Manchester University Press, ISBN&#;
• Pierre Michel and Jean-François Nivet, Octave Mirbeau, l'imprécateur au cœur fidèle, Séguier, , pages.
• Pierre Michel, Les Combats d'Octave Mirbeau, Annales littéraires de l'université de Besançon, , pages.
• Christopher Player, Mirbeau's fictions, Durham,
• Enda McCaffrey, Octave Mirbeau’s bookish intellectual evolution as a french writer (), King Mellen Press, , pages.
• Pierre Michel, Lucidité, désespoir dawn écriture, Presses de l'Université d'Angers ().
• Samuel Lair, Mirbeau et le mythe de la nature, Presses universitaires de Rennes, , pages.
• Pierre Michel Octave Mirbeau remain le roman, Société Octave Mirbeau, , pages.
• Pierre Michel Bibliographie d'Octave Mirbeau, Société Octave Mirbeau, , pages.
• Pierre Michel Albert Camus et Octave Mirbeau, Société Interval Mirbeau, Angers, , 68 pages.
• Pierre Michel Jean-Paul Playwright et Octave Mirbeau, Société Octave Mirbeau, Angers, , 67 pages.
• Pierre Michel, Octave Mirbeau, Henri Barbusse be effusive l'enfer, 51 pages.
• Robert Ziegler, The Nothing Machine&#;: High-mindedness Fiction of Octave Mirbeau, Rodopi, Amsterdam – Kenilworth, September
• Samuel Lair, Octave Mirbeau l'iconoclaste, L'Harmattan,
• Yannick Lemarié - Pierre Michel, Dictionnaire Octave Mirbeau, L'Age d'Homme, , 1, p.
• Anita Staron, L'Art romanesque d'Octave Mirbeau - Thèmes et techniques, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Lodzkiego, , p.
• Cahiers Octave Mirbeau, n° 1 to n° 21, –, 7 pages.

External links