The ?decadent Mirbeau (18481917) is best known for his florid
exercises in sensuality, Torture Garden and The Diary of a
Chamber-maid (this latter the source of two famous films). Here, an
(1890) novel, the completion of a partially autobiographical
trilogy, portrays the foreshortened manhood of the eponymous
Sbastien, a hopeful French provincial youngster who endures
brutally humble beginnings and the various hardships of a Jesuit
college, then perishes on a WWI battlefield. S bastien is a kind of
tabula rasa onto whom others' romantic and sexual longings are
projected, without his full complicity with (or understanding of)
the passions he innocently arouses. Mirbeau's superbly controlled
period piece is, accordingly, both a keen portrayal of the idealism
and solipsism of youth and a welcome reminder of the genius of a
writer who has probably always been rather seriously underrated.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Sebastien Roch is a brilliantly drawn portrait of a boy's
psychological, sexual and political coming of age in provincial
France against the background of the Belle Epoque. We follow
Sebastien as he enters a jesuit college as a natural, unspoiled
innocent child and develops into a corrupt, disillusioned, tortured
adolescent until his senseless death at the age of 21 on the
battlefield.
It is a powerful finale to Mirbeau's trilogy of "angry young
man" novels. The harrowing story of the perversion of innocence is
offset by Mirbeau's lyrical descriptions, capturing in words the
serene impressionism of Monet and the violent pornographic excesses
of Feliciens Rops.
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