Octave Mirbeau, un canonisateur à canoniser

Abstract

Journalistic criticism that evaluates contemporary authors often falls into the sin of ephemeral judgments with no value to the literary history. The example of Octave Mirbeau is quite exceptional because the texts which he has published in newspapers reveal a critic of art whose assessments are valid, accepted and transmitted through literary and art histories. This research examines Mirbeau’s critical method in the context of the nineteenth century French criticism and discovers a unique approach where daily activity, sense of form, creative empathy and strong judgments intertwine and coexist. According to the classification of Thibaudet, Mirbeau unites all three types of criticism: journalistic, artists’ and academic. However, this shows that the historical consciousness of Mirbeau reveals him as a latent artistic and literary historian. Thanks to his critical talent and evaluations, many authors of unquestionable status in today’s histories are revealed by Octave Mirbeau. They include both writers and artists, such as: the Belgian authors Maurice Maeterlinck and Georges Rodenbach, but also Rodin, Monet, Camille Claudel. In his work on canonization Octave Mirbeau also proves himself to be a historian of art and literature by using the form of journalistic criticism. His judgments have been used by both historians and critics until today.