Octave Mirbeau (16 February 1848 â€" 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, while 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
thirty 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.[1] 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,[2] and his
debut in literature when he worked as a ghostwriter,[3] 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)[4] and fervent
supporter of Alfred Dreyfus,[5] 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.[6]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 [7] 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).
novelist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, journalist, and
playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among
the public, while 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
thirty 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.[1] 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,[2] and his
debut in literature when he worked as a ghostwriter,[3] 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)[4] and fervent
supporter of Alfred Dreyfus,[5] 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.[6]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 [7] 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).
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