Æsthetic Perversion: Octave Mirbeau's Le Jardin des supplices

Octave Mirbeau's novel, Le Jardin des supplices (1899), is often analyzed with regard to the author's social and political involvement. Another perspective useful for understanding the novel is that of Mirbeau's æsthetics, influenced by his love of visual art and his work as an art critic. Following the lead of writers such as Thomas De Quincey and Charles Baudelaire, Mirbeau inscribes into his novel an æstheticization of torture, inviting the treatment of torture as an art and of Clara as the figure of the art critic. As such, the novel may be read as a commentary on the art world. (CFC)