The Torture Garden (novel)
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| Author | Octave Mirbeau |
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| Original title | Le Jardin des supplices |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Genre | Decadent novel |
| Publisher | Fasquelle |
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Publication date
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1899 |
The Torture Garden (French: Le Jardin des supplices) is a novel written by the French journalist, novelist and playwright Octave Mirbeau, and was first published in 1899 during the Dreyfus affair. The novel is ironically dedicated: "To the priests, the soldiers, the judges, to those people who educate, instruct and govern men, I dedicate these pages of Murder and Blood."
Published at the height of the Dreyfus affair, Mirbeau’s novel is a loosely assembled reworking of texts composed at different eras, featuring different styles, and showcasing different characters. Beginning with material stemming from articles on the 'Law of Murder' discussed in the "Frontispiece" ("The Manuscript"), the novel continues with a farcical critique of French politics with "En Mission" ("The Mission"): a French politician's aide is sent on a pseudo-scientific expedition to China when his presence at home would be compromising. It then moves on to an account of a visit to a Cantonese prison by a narrator accompanied by the sadist and hysteric Clara, who delights in witnessing flayings, crucifixions and numerous tortures, all done in beautifully laid out and groomed gardens, and explaining the beauty of torture to her companion. Finally she attains hysterical orgasm and passes out in exhaustion, only to begin again a few days later ("Le Jardin des supplices", "The Garden").
There is an allegory about the hypocrisy of European 'civilisation' and about the 'Law of Murder'. There is also a denunciation of bloody French and British colonialism and a ferocious attack on what Mirbeau saw as the corrupt morality of bourgeois capitalist society and the state, which he believed were based on murder.
But Mirbeau’s multiple transgressions of the rules of verisimilitude and his disregard for novelistic convention confuse the issue of the novel's genre affiliation and leave open the question of the author’s moral message, leaving the readers of today in a state of wonderment, perplexity, and shock.
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Wikipedia