Papers by Claire Nettleton
In The Nothing Machine (2007), Robert Ziegler, a prolific scholar of decadent literature, articu... more In The Nothing Machine (2007), Robert Ziegler, a prolific scholar of decadent literature, articulated Octave Mirbeau’s iconoclastic prose as a voracious mechanism that shreds hypocritical belief systems and sets fire to antiquated institutions. Perhaps even more groundbreaking and beautifully written as its predecessor, Ziegler’s second volume on the revolutionary fin-de-siècle author, Octave Mirbeau’s Fictions of the Transcendental, focuses on the lily that grows from the Nothing Machine’s mulch and the phoenix that rises from its ashes.
The antithesis of the iconic Seine, the vile and polluted Bièvre River was part of the industrial... more The antithesis of the iconic Seine, the vile and polluted Bièvre River was part of the industrial landscape of pre–Haussmannian Paris. By 1875, the Bièvre was so unsanitary that the city took measures to bury it underground. At the end of the century, J.–K. Huysmans, who had detailed his strolls around the Bièvre in writing, ruptured with the Naturalist school. It seems counter–intuitive to label Huysmans, an author renowned neither for nature writing nor poetry, as an ‘eco–poet.’ However, his prose poems ‘La Rive gauche’ (1874) and ‘La Bièvre’ (1880 and 1890) express awareness of environmental decline. In my analysis of these poems using contemporary ecocriticism, I argue that the river’s disappearance coincides with the birth of the Decadent movement, which has an ecological underpinning. In its transition from urban waterway to underground sewer, the Bièvre became part of a new aesthetic that sought to both bury and reconstruct the natural world.
Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 2014
In La 628- E8 (1907), Octave Mirbeau, a master of iconoclastic, decadent novels such as Le Jardin... more In La 628- E8 (1907), Octave Mirbeau, a master of iconoclastic, decadent novels such as Le Jardin des supplices , recounts his fantastic experiences zipping around Europe in an early automobile. Witnessing mountains disappearing into seas, landscapes of infinite shapes and contrasting colors blurring into the changing skies, the author's own vision of the world around him begins to transform. The vehicle not only transports its passengers to new and captivating lands, "elle nous mène aussi à travers des moeurs cachées, des idées en travail, à travers de l'histoire, notre histoire vivante d'aujourd'hui" (Mirbeau 39). The narrator's passion for speed and dynamism are certainly parallel to Futurism. Published one year before Filippo Marinetti's La Ville charnelle, this early example of auto-fiction disassembles stagnant conventions. Fixed beliefs disappear out the exhaust pipe as the car hurdles into the future. The modern automobile, coupled with other new technologies, such as: "cinematography, radiography, telephony, electricity, and the technologies of speed," contributed to a "technologically mediated crisis of the senses" (Danius 1-2). A product of this period of technological progress and artistic innovation, this disjointed and non-linear autobiographical novel reveals new understandings of both time and space. However, the experience of zooming by various towns and viewing landscapes in rapid flashes could be considered aberrant or even insane. Mirbeau calls automobile travel a mental illness that impacts both the mind and body. L'automobilisme est donc une maladie, une maladie mentale. Et cette maladie s'appelle d'un nom très joli : la vitesse…Non pas la vitesse mécanique qui emporte la machine sur les routes, à travers pays et pays, mais la vitesse, en quelque sorte névropathique, qui emporte l'homme à travers toutes ses actions et ses distractions... (53-54).
Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 2013
Claire Nettleton 22 22 Cahiers Octave Mirbeau L'ANIMAL ET L'ESTHÉTIQUE NIHILISTE DE DANS LE CIEL ... more Claire Nettleton 22 22 Cahiers Octave Mirbeau L'ANIMAL ET L'ESTHÉTIQUE NIHILISTE DE DANS LE CIEL L'imagination, abandonnée par la raison, produit d'impossibles monstres ; lorsqu'elle est unie à elle, elle est la mère des arts et la source de leurs merveilles. Francisco de Goya xxxii Dans le roman Dans le ciel (publié dans l'Écho de Paris de septembre 1892 à mai 1893 et en livre en 1989), Octave Mirbeau décrit ainsi une oeuvre d'art qui se trouve dans un salon bourgeois et qui représente des enfants nus, jouant aux billes : « C'était hideux, mais tel était le goût artistique de ma mère. Par malheur les mouches ne cessaient de déposer, sur le plâtre, des taches brunâtres, qui faisaient la désolation de ma famille » (DC , 60). Dans ce passage, ce sont des excréments d'animaux qui abîment une "oeuvre d'art" conventionnelle, ainsi que les valeurs familiales. On serait tenté d'en conclure que ces mouches ont bel et bien créé une nouvelle « peinture », qui a détruit du même coup l'idéologie bourgeoise au cours de ce processus. En recourant à ce type d'images significatives, Mirbeau veut faire comprendre que l'animal est à la fois une source de destruction et de création. Il participe d'une esthétique décadente de la peur, de l'horreur et du dégoût. Motivé par sa mission anarchiste de « participer à la grande révolution du regard xxxii », Mirbeau atteint son objectif en réactivant le mythe selon lequel l'artiste révolutionnaire, qui met à bas les traditions artistiques du passé, est en cela comparable aux animaux, qui détruisent pour créer.
Books by Claire Nettleton
Octave Mirbeau would soon rankle bourgeois sensibilities with such fin-de-siècle literary provoca... more Octave Mirbeau would soon rankle bourgeois sensibilities with such fin-de-siècle literary provocations as The Torture Garden (1899) and Diary of a Chambermaid (1900), but in 1892 the French anarchist and litterateur signaled the arrival of modernism with Dans le ciel (In the Sky), an emotionally arresting fictional portrait of a reclusive painter tragically undone by the vaulting, annihilative power of his own ineffable vision. Informed by the author’s active engagement with the late nineteenth-century avant garde, this obscure novel illuminates the Impressionist milieu while presenting a timeless meditation on the bond of friendship and the volatile communion between madness and art. The tragic character of Lucien is based on Vincent Van Gogh, whom the author adamantly defended.
Originally serialized in the French literary journal L’Echo de Paris between September 1892 and May 1893, In the Sky remained unpublished until 1989 when preeminent Mirbeau scholars Jean-François Nivet and Pierre Michel edited and released the first standalone edition as an unfinished novella. Over a century after its initial publication, Mirbeau’s overlooked classic now appears in English for the first time.
The present text has been faithfully translated by the American novelist Ann Sterzinger with assistance by Mirbeau scholars Robert Ziegler and Claire Nettleton, who also contributes an introduction.
Uploads
Papers by Claire Nettleton
Books by Claire Nettleton
Originally serialized in the French literary journal L’Echo de Paris between September 1892 and May 1893, In the Sky remained unpublished until 1989 when preeminent Mirbeau scholars Jean-François Nivet and Pierre Michel edited and released the first standalone edition as an unfinished novella. Over a century after its initial publication, Mirbeau’s overlooked classic now appears in English for the first time.
The present text has been faithfully translated by the American novelist Ann Sterzinger with assistance by Mirbeau scholars Robert Ziegler and Claire Nettleton, who also contributes an introduction.
Originally serialized in the French literary journal L’Echo de Paris between September 1892 and May 1893, In the Sky remained unpublished until 1989 when preeminent Mirbeau scholars Jean-François Nivet and Pierre Michel edited and released the first standalone edition as an unfinished novella. Over a century after its initial publication, Mirbeau’s overlooked classic now appears in English for the first time.
The present text has been faithfully translated by the American novelist Ann Sterzinger with assistance by Mirbeau scholars Robert Ziegler and Claire Nettleton, who also contributes an introduction.