Sebastien Roch

by Octave Mirbeau

'In the catalogue of novels about lives distorted by unhappy schooldays, Mirbeau's contribution must be one of the bitterest. He follows the young, carefree Sebastien from a small French town to the bleak Breton coast. There the Jesuit fathers, in whom his snobbish father has placed so much trust,heap misery upon misery. The ironmonger's son is mocked by France's adolescent aristocracy and turns for comfort to the perfidious priests. An angry novel, but poignant through Mirbeau's descriptions of landscape to which his hero sensitively responds. But the age allows no redemption for Roch except oblivion.' Isobel Montgomery in The Guardian 'The tale is a semi-autobiographical portrait of a boy's coming of age in provincial France against a Belle Epoque backdrop. From serene impressionism to violent pornographic excesses, the bones of Mirbeau's life makes for a moving novel.' Alex O'Connell in The Times 'It is a novel that combines anger and lyricism, the raw beauty of the landscape in sharp contrast to the ugliness of real life.' Tariq Ali in The Financial Times

Genres: Fiction, France, French Literature, Classics, Coming Of Age

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1890

About the author

Octave Mirbeau was a French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde. His work has been translated into thirty languages.

Reviews

[Federica ~ Excusetheink · Rating 5 out of 5]

...per il momento passo e chiudo

[Eadweard · Rating 3 out of 5]

" Beyond the limits imposed by the physical reality of his childhood, he could see the rudiments of shifting ideas, the embryonic contours of life in the outside world, a whole unexplained, discordant machinery made up of laws, duties, hierarchies, relativities, each interlocking with the next, set in motion by a multitude of gears in which his frail personality would inevitably become caught and mangled. This caused him violent headaches and, sensitive child that he was, nearly drove him to a nervous breakdown. "
---



" As a setting for their mysteries, religions have always selected wretched and hateful places; they have never wanted joyous nature to burst forth near their birthplace and discomfit the gods. They require shadow, terrifying rocks, distressingly barren lands, sunless skies, skies the colour of sleep, where the drifting clouds perpetuate a dream of future homelands and ethereal resting-places. "
---



" These are moments of supreme happiness, when my soul tears itself away from the hateful carcass of my body and launches itself into the impalpable, the invisible, the unrevealed, with the breeze singing and all kinds of shapes wandering the incorruptible expanse of the sky. Ah, my plans, my dreams, the inspirations of a brain gladdened by the light! My reinvigorated will plunges once more into the waves of this purifying dream. I become again a prey to chimeras. I want to embrace and conquer everything I see and hear. I will be a poet, a painter, a musician, a scientist. What do obstacles matter? I will thrust them aside. What does my intellectual solitude matter? I will people it with all the spirits that are in the voice of the wind, the shadows of the river, the dark depths of the woods, the scented breath of flowers, the magic of distant horizons. Sadly, these ecstasies last only a short while. I have no stamina for things which are beautiful or good. When I return from these transports, my arms are even wearier from having tried to embrace the impalpable, my soul is further sickened from having glimpsed the inaccessible path to pure joy and guilt-free happiness. I come crashing painfully down from on high into the dark shame of my incurable solitude. "
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" I have noticed that patriotism is the crudest and most irrational of the feelings that move the masses: it always ends up in drunkenness. As for me, I didn’t dare go round to Madame Lecautel’s. I’m worried that Marguerite will give herself away, and that would be a useless and troublesome complication. Should we tell? From the moment my father came into my room, Marguerite became only the most distant of concerns for me, virtually forgotten, insignificant. War makes me feel something though: revulsion and fear. I cannot accept the idea of a man running straight towards the muzzle of a cannon or offering his chest to bayonets, without even knowing why. And he will never know. Such courage – of which I am totally incapable – strikes me as absurd, inferior and vulgar, and I suppose that in normal life, a man possessing such courage would be locked in the deepest dungeon. I’ve often thought about war; I’ve often tried to imagine it. I close my eyes and attempt to call up images of slaughter. My impressions never vary: I am revolted and I feel afraid, not just for myself, but for everyone, for whom I tremble. Despite my upbringing I cannot accept military heroism as a virtue, it just seems like a more dangerous and disturbing form of banditry and murder. I can understand that people of the same country should fight and kill one another to gain freedom or rights, the right to live, eat, think; I can’t understand fighting people you know nothing about, with whom you share no common interests, and whom you cannot hate because you don’t know them. I’ve read that there are superior laws in life and that war is one of them, and that it is necessary in order to maintain a balance between nations and to spread civilisation; but no reasonable man could support that idea. Epidemics and marriage seem to me perfectly sufficient means of controlling the human population. War only destroys the youngest, strongest elements of the population; it destroys hope and humanity."

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book broke my heart and I shed a tear on the last page. Corruption, pain, trauma, religion, injustice, war, love and friendship. This book has it all. Mirbeau’s style is exquisite, I will have to read it in the original French next. Mirbeau’s descriptions of the effects of sexual abuse are terrifyingly vivid and really resonated in me.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mirbeau, in his early years, seems to have been obsessed with the coming of age novel. In this, his third, he tells the tale of Sebastien, the young son of a petit bourgeois ironmonger, sent off to Jesuit school to brighten his family's prospects by rubbing elbows with the scions of the aristocracy.

Mirbeau is a master of description, and a deft and tender painter of psychological trauma. His telling of Sebastien's relationships with his wealthier classmates and with the cruelty (itself born of personal trauma as much as from rigid social mores) of the Jesuit schoolmasters rings true over a century later. In fact, it could have been ripped from the headlines in Boston or L.A. -- only it's far more powerful than you're likely to read from any fictionalized account of contemporary scandals of priest sexual abuse.

[Kalliope]

Setting in a Jesuit college... no wonder Joyce read and liked this.

[Lior · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un chef-d'œuvre !!!!!!

[L.L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nie spodziewałem się, że tak stara książka (ma ponad 130 lat...) aż tak mi się spodoba. To jest moim zdaniem sztuka napisać tak ponadczasową książkę! "Ponadczasową" w tym sensie, że i dzisiejszy czytelnik może ją przeczytać bez znudzenia i bez problemu zrozumieć treść (a to wcale nie jest oczywistością moim zdaniem :P ). Oczywiście język jest nieco przestarzały, ale napisana jest w ten sposób, który ja lubię - lekko do czytania, wciąga i bardzo łatwo było mi się na niej skupić w niemal każdej sytuacji (a na wielu książkach niestety nie mogę się skupić gdy wokół mnie np. rozmawiają). No i jeszcze ponadczasowa jest ludzka moralność :D Książka jest dosyć humorystycznie napisana, czego się nie spodziewałem - nie ukrywajmy, że chciałem ją przeczytać ze względu na wątek molestowania - ciekawy byłem co na ten temat napisał ktoś, kto żył 150 lat temu... okazuje się, że całkiem dobrze to opisał (znaczy tak myślę, uczucia wydają mi się całkiem podobne do tego co mówią współcześnie osoby molestowane). A jednak to nie jest główny w książce wątek (no i to akurat nie jest zabawne), ale cała reszta treści jest dość wesoła. Taka próbka:

"Pana Rocha oburzyło, że jego wyjaśnienie zostało przyjęte przez tych prostaków z tak małym zdziwieniem i zachwytem. Cóż to, czy to rzecz normalna, bez znaczenia, że jego syn jedzie pierwszą klasą do jezuitów? Rzecz, która przytrafia się co dzień? I każdemu? Przeszło mu przez myśl, żeby podejść do nich, wytłumaczyć im, czym są jezuici; wyrzucał sobie, że nie zaaranżował wyjazdu syna w sposób bardziej uroczysty, nie poprosił proboszcza, rejenta, doktora - wszystkich wybitnych osobistości miasta, żeby im towarzyszyli..."
(s.44)

albo:

"Jedyna jasna wiadomość, jaką mogłem wyłowić, to ta, że Bolorec jest w Paryżu u jakiegoś rzeźbiarza, "swojego krajana". Z tego, co pisze, wynika, że on sam niewiele rzeźbi, a i rzeźbiarz również. Podejrzewam nawet, że nie rzeźbią wcale."
(s.255)

:D

Ale i też jeden mądry:

"- Dlaczego śpiewasz?
- A bo ja tam wiem? Śpiewam!
- Tak się cieszysz, żeś został żołnierzem?
- Co to, to nie. Śpiewam, bo inni śpiewają.
- A dlaczego inni śpiewają?
- A bo ja tam wiem... Taki już zwyczaj u poborowych.
- Czy wiesz, co to jest ojczyzna?
Patrzy na mnie z ogłupiałą miną. Nigdy sobie nie stawiał takiego pytania, to jasne.
- A więc, mój chłopcze, ojczyzna to paru bandytów, którzy przypisują sobie prawo zamienienia ciebie w coś, co znaczy mniej niż człowiek, mniej niż zwierzę, mniej niż roślina: w numerek!"
(z.286)

(czytana: 9-17.06.2021)
4/5

[Lee Foust · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another obviously heartfelt cry of suffering and indignation for the young Mirbeau. This is the third in his semi-autobiographical novels of his youth, upbringing, schooling, and experiences in the Franco-Prussian War. This one focuses on his Jesuit education, sexual abuse, getting expelled and all the aftereffects of the trauma of being a sensitive artistic child ground into emotional chuck by a world of bland conformity, lies, hypocrisy, and hedonistic, self-serving sexual predators in cassocks. Sounds like a weekend at CPAC with MAGA.

Which brings us to what is remarkable about this novel, which is a hundred and thirty-seven years old, is that we still squelch and pound down the sensitive youngster, desperately trying to train them to be fearful, cynical, and hypocritical in our schools so that they can compete with the conscienceless rich liars who nepotistically ascend to the various thrones of the modern nation state, corporate aristocracy, and military-industrial complex. Churches of all types continue to shelter predators and to brainwash and emotionally destroy the innocent by convincing them that the most idiotic nonsense is the only truth until they will cling to any stupidity through faith. The artists who don't make scads of money for parasitical mega corporations are forced to either starve or waste their lives in academia, out of touch with anything resembling an audience for their heartfelt labors. And every so often our politicians cook up a war to distract everyone from all the rest of the endless abuse and injustice and kill off as many of the weak and thoughtful as we can to insure that the lying brutes and half-witted children of the rich continue to run everything into the abusive and self-destructive shitshow that is Western Civilization.

God I love Mirbeau for harping on this in heartfelt and powerful novel after novel. It never gets old because it just goes on and on and on and on and on.

[Missberet · Rating 5 out of 5]

The final book of "Empire of the Senses"
Sebastian is a very bored young man who has interests in poetry and drawing. An innocent victim of the bougoire and is destroyed by them, he is a victim of pettiness and debauchery.
Once again the demeaning bougoire comes in the form of M.Roch who's ambitions of wealth is such he wants his only son Sebastian to go to an expensive Jesuit collage for his benefit of flaunting and for his own dreams of great wealth. Sebastian, who's Father is an ironmonger is treated as such by his classmates. Eventually he makes a friend in Bolorec. Father De Kern, who's s motive is not noble, sends Sebastian on an inner journey of confusion and distrust. He is thrown out of Jesuit collage which leads him back home to his Father and Marguerite, his childhood friend, who wants to be more,but inside Sebastian is not the same. It is Bolorec who comes back into his life again as a true friend when they join the army.

[Comte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Premier roman de Mirbeau que je lis, et j'en lirai d'autres !
Le style est à la fois très orné et très sincère, très analytique et très sentimental. Le contenu du récit est absolument affreux et cette horreur est tangible. En parallèle, les considérations sociales (entre critique satirique de la petite bourgeoisie, rejet total de l'Eglise, et interrogations sur le sort des laissés pour compte) sont bienvenues et complètent parfaitement l'évolution psychologique de Sébastien, dont la vie intérieure est très riche, bien développée et intéressante. Les autres personnages ne sont pas en reste et on se les représente aisément.
Enfin, c'est un roman important. Le thème est encore tristement actuel et c'est dommage que ce texte soit à moitié tombé dans l'oubli.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while he still appealed to the literary and artistic avant-garde. Octave Mirbeau was born on February 16 in 1848, and he died on the same day in 1917. In his art criticism, Mirbeau championed the modernist painters, many of them close friends, and in his writing he used many similar experimental and genre-breaking techniques. His novels range from the playful La 628-E8, a semi-documentary car travelogue titled with his license plate, to the prurient Torture-Garden, in which excess, violence and nasty sex seem the only possible responses to the world’s systematic, class-driven oppressions. In Sébastien Roch (1890) (English translation : Sébastien Roch, 2000), Mirbeau purged the traumatic effects of his experience as a student at a Jesuits school in Vannes. In the novel, the 13-year old Sébastien is sexually abused by a priest at the school and the abuse destroys his life. This is another of the precursors of twentieth century literature.