''La 628-E8'' is a novel by the French novelist and playwright

Octave Mirbeau Octave Mirbeau (16 February 1848 – 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, whilst still appealing to the ...

, published by Fasquelle in 1907. Part travelogue, part fantasy, part cultural commentary and critique, Mirbeau's book highlights its own unclassifiability: "Is it a diary?”, the narrator wonders. "Is it even the account of a trip?”

Plot

Titled after the number of Mirbeau's licence plate, ''La 628-E8'' begins by recounting Mirbeau’s travels to

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

, whose colonial exploitation of

Belgian Congo The Belgian Congo (french: Congo belge, ; nl, Belgisch-Congo) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in 1964. Colo ...

rubber and abuse of the indigenous people Mirbeau excoriates. The book then proceeds to the Netherlands, where he finds remembrances of Rembrandt,

Van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...

and also

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. Durin ...

. It is during his sojourn in this country that Mirbeau encounters his old friend, the deranged speculator Weil-See, whose reflections on mathematics and metaphysics are among Mirbeau’s most colorful pages. Mirbeau's fictional car trip then takes him to Germany, whose industry, cleanliness, and order stand in contrast to what Mirbeau regarded as the slovenliness and laxity of his own countrymen.

Commentary

To Mirbeau, the automobile represents an ideal instrument for combatting ethnocentrism and

xenophobia Xenophobia () is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an in-group and out-group and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a ...

. The novel’s most electrifying descriptions recreate in readers the speeding motorist’s dazed disorientation as the missile of his vehicle carries him past epileptic telegraph poles and blurred animals along the roadside. In an incongruous final section underscoring the novel’s fractured structure, Mirbeau appends a scandalous account of '' La Mort de Balzac'' (''The Death of Balzac''), relating the author’s death agonies while, in an adjoining room, his wife, Mme Hanska, engaged in sexual frolicking with painter

Jean Gigoux Jean François Gigoux (6 January 1806, Besançon – 11 December 1894, Paris) was a French painter, lithographer, illustrator and art collector. Biography His father, Claude Étienne Gigoux, was a blacksmith, originally from Seveux (Haute-Saô ...

. One can only surmise the controversial episode constituted another instance of the kind of iconoclastic writing that Mirbeau was inclined to engage in. An English translation, not complete, has been published : ''Sketches of a journey'', illustrated by Pierre Bonnard.

External links

''La 628-E8''
Éditions du Boucher, 2003. *

''La Mort de Balzac''
*

Pierre Michel Pierre Michel (born 11 June 1942), is a professor of literature and a scholar specializing in the French writer Octave Mirbeau. Michel was born in Toulon, the son of the historian Henri Michel. After defending his doctoral dissertation on the w ...

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foreword
1907 French novels Novels by Octave Mirbeau Travelogues French travel books {{1900s-novel-stub

Plot

Commentary

Further reading

External links