Twenty-One Days of a Neurasthenic by Octave Mirbeau

Twenty-One Days of a Neurasthenic Reviews

• 
  merixien

  “Benim, yani Clara Fistule’ün, bir erkeğin hayvanlıklarının ve bir kadının hoppa yaltaklanmalarının tohumu olduğu düşüncesine hiç alışamadım… Dahası, medeni kanunun ‘ailem’ olduğunu söylediği bu iki yaratığı hiç kabul etmedim.”
  
  
Kitap, Georges Vasseur’un bir doktor tavsiyesi ile gittiği Pireneler’deki sağlık merkezinde karşılaştığı arkadaşlarına dair gözlemleri ve hikayelerinden oluşuyor. Her ne kadar dağların ovaların ortasına sağlıklı olmak için gönderilmiş olsa da, anlatıcımız için dağlar, diğer insanlarda görülen o büyülü etkiyi yaratmıyor. Aksine dağların yarattığı boğuculuk onu tamamen çevresini gözlemlemeye ve hikayeler anlatmaya yönlendiriyor. Bu noktada biraz Decameron çağrışımı yapıyor ama daha karanlık bir modeli ortaya çıkıyor. Kitap, roman kategorisinde sayılsa da aslında yazarın daha önceden gazetelerde yayınladığı öykülerinin birbirine bağlanmasıyla oluşturulmuş. 19.yüzyılda özellikle Fransa’da görülen yüzyıl sonu yozlaşmaya dair, sinizm ve karamsarlık yüklü eleştirilere oldukça iyi bir örnek. Bir kaplıca şehrine Fransa’nın önemli, bakan, general, bürokrat yahut din adamı gibi isimlerini bir araya getirip salt bir kötülükle, her türden ahlaksızlık ve etik dışı hareketleriyle yüzleştiyor. Kitapta gerçekler daha çok grotesk sembollerle karikatürize edilerek eleştiriliyor buna karşın, ilk bölümlerde ironik bir şekilde eğlenceli bir metin okuyorsunuz. Ancak ilerledikçe insanın kötülüğü ve dehşeti artmaya, yazarın döneme dair karamsarlığı yükselmeye başlıyor. Sosyal ve politik açıdan rahatsız edici bütün bu tarihi öyle alaycı bir dil ile anlatıyor ki okumaktan büyük bir keyif alıyorsunuz. Benim Octave Mirbeau ‘dan okuduğum ilk kitaptı ve çok beğendim.
• 
  S̶e̶a̶n̶

  A rather inexplicable work, strangely compelling and even hilarious at times while tedious at others, in turn macroscopic social satire and microscopic journal of a neurotic aesthete. Holed up in a mountain resort which he abhors, surrounded by people he can't stand, he is purportedly convalescing from anxiety. Much of the text is secondhand stories told by dining companions and various acquaintances he encounters, though this is occasionally interpolated with poignant reflections on his feelings of alienation, such as this:

  It is only at evening time, in my room at the hotel, that I begin to feel a little bit alive again, for the thin partition walls come to life in the evening ... They talk ... They have voices, human voices ... and these voices, suddenly resonant, speak to me of passions, obsessions, secret lives, everything that matters to me and makes me recognize the human soul ... Not man standing in front of an invisible, sneaky mountain, but man standing in front of himself ... The walls quiver with all the humanity they shelter, which is somehow filtered to me, stripped of its lies, its poses ... Precious hours which distract me from my sadness, from my loneliness, and which wash me all over again in that vast, fraternal absurdity of life ... !
• 
  Ronald Morton

  On the other hand, how better could I spend my time than introducing you to some of my friends, some of the people with whom I rub elbows here, all day long? They’re like most people, some grotesque, others merely repugnant; in short, perfect scum whom I would not recommend young ladies to read about.

  At turns nihilistic and misanthropic, this a deeply funny little book. The quote above sums the book up well, the narrator begins to talk about someone he knows and then rambles on into some story or anecdote - typically exposing some hypocrisy or vanity or wrongdoing or the like - and yet it never gets old or wears, as each small story is impeccably crafted, and frequently witty. When not witty they're cynically biting or savage (hell, typically even then they are funny). I expect this was a fairly shocking book when it came it, even today it still has bite.
  
  (Only tangentially related, but Mirbeau also wrote the book Torture Garden, which I presume is what Naked City named their album (12"?) after. If you haven't heard it, check it out [if you like extreme avant jazz noise weirdness / John Zorn]:
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ccyhnJo...)
• 
  Sander

  Peasants are generally known as shrewd and cunning; political candidates, very often, as stupid. People have written novels, farces, even sociological treatises about this, all of which confirm these two fundamental truths. Now, it happens that some of these stupid candidates always manage to swindle the shrewd peasants in the end. They have an infallible method for doing this, which requires no intelligence, no preparatory research, no personal magnetism, nothing that you might expect from even the most lowly menial worker or the most senile civil servant. This method can be summed up in two words: make promises ... In order to win, a candidate need do nothing more than exploit- and ruthlessly exploit -the most persistent, stubborn, dogged mania of mankind: hope. Through hope, he can evoke and control the things that matter most in people's lives: their passions, vices, financial interests. Indeed, you could pose the following axiom as an iron law: "That candidate is always elected, who, during a given election campaign, utters the greatest number of promises and issues the greatest number of opinions-even, to some extent, opinions which he actually holds-no matter that these opinions, and the extent to which he holds them, are diametrically opposed to the voter's better interests." The form of surgery known as "pulling teeth"- demonstrated daily on the public squares, with less finesse, it's true, and certainly less rhetoric-goes by other names in the political arena: the constituents call it "voicing our will,", and the politician, "listening to the will of the people..." And the newspaper writers use even more hallowed, burnished, glowing names for this same process... And such are the amazing workings of the political machine in all "democratic societies" that for several thousand years now, the will of the people has been continuously voiced yet never heard, while the machinery itself turns and turns without the tiniest crack in their gears, or the slightest pause in their smooth operation. Everyone is happy, and things appear to run smoothly.
  What is most amazing about the workings of universal suffrage is this: because the people believe themselves to be sovereign, not subject to the authority of any masters above them, you can promise them benefits they will never enjoy, and you never have to keep promises which, anyway, are beyond your power to deliver. In a perfect world, you might think it would be better to never make such promises in the first place, since it violates the democratic and supremely human rights belonging inalienably (or so we are told) to these poor voters, who spend their entire lives chasing after these promises the way gamblers chase windfalls or lovers chase heartbreak. But we are all like that, whether we vote or not... When we get something we want, we lose the euphoria that comes from desiring it... And we love nothing so much as the dream itself, the eternal, vain aspiration toward a nirvana that we rationally know is unattainable.
  Therefore, the essential thing in any election is to promise the world, to promise far and wide, promise more than any of the other candidates do. The more impossible these promises are to deliver, and the more profoundly they speak to what the voters really need, the more effective they will be. The peasant wants nothing more than to cast his vote- which is to say, to surrender his power of choice, his freedom, and his life savings into the hands of the first moron or the first crook who comes along- and again and again he demands only that the promises he is given, in exchange for these things, are worthy of all the pain that he suffers. What he gets from those promises is, finally, the ultimate certainty that he is destined to be swindled, a duped pawn on the chessboard of life.
  
  published in 1901, Paris
  from, Twenty-One Days of a Neurasthenic
  by Octave Mirbeau
• 
  Brendan Connell

  I am not going to review the book here, but the translation.... Which, at this point I have to admit not having read the full length of, but enough I think I can comment. For the most part it is good, but one aspect, for me, really sort of dampens the pleasure of reading it. In the original, Mirbeau gives many people funny names. In the French, they work. But Vicari has made the mistake (not the first time a translator has) of translating some of these names, sometimes just slightly altering them, at other times completely "translating" them, so that he changes the feeling one would get from reading them in French (since they actually represent French people). Thus Clara Fistule unnecessarily becomes Clara Fistula, while Fardeau-Fardat becomes Cumberburden… etc. The translator should have just put a footnote explaining the joke of the name instead of trying to reproduce it in English. That said, this is an important book, so it is great that he did translate it. I just hope if he does translate more of Mirbeau’s work, he could skip trying to replicate this aspect in the translation… So, 5 stars for the original book and 3 for the translation.
• 
  Lee Foust

  I discovered Mirbeau only last spring, ordered the only three of his novels currently in print in English, and, although the first two that I read (Torture Garden and Diary of a Chambermaid), are more famous and were known to me long ago--one through its title and the other through the two film versions--were merely good, this one is a truly great novel. Although not a so-called plot-based or single-narrative traditional novel, Twenty-One days of a Neurasthenic, I believe, falls into the category defined by the translator of Potaki's excellent Manuscript Found in Saragossa as a novel-in-frames. That is to say, the neurasthenic is our narrator and his twenty-one days spent at a mountain resort--to cure him of his fear of mountains, among other nervous maladies--is really only an excuse to give us a vast cast of characters and to tell not only their stories, but also the stories of many other characters with whom these characters have come into contact over the years. The novel is therefore a cornucopia of characters and tales worthy of Boccaccio, Chaucer, Apuleius, or The Thousand and One Nights, but with a distinctly French Decadent flavor and a political-philosophical base that aligns it a bit with de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom.
  
  The linking factor is Mirbeau's disgust with wealth, privilege, and the corruption of those in power, a message wholly in vogue today so it's like it was written yesterday. I loved the way the stories come pouring in as if they were the mere byproducts of the narrator's stay at his mountain resort, as if casually introduced by his running into random characters, but really build dramatically as the puppet-master Mirbeau introduces them in the perfect order in event, message, and drama until the novel arrives at a crescendo of horror and even transcends its own ostensible theme at the end to finish as a kind of cry of fear in the face of human degradation and evil. Wow. What a clever masterpiece. Twenty-One days of a Neurasthenic is really much more convincing, powerful, and more of a whole through its proliferation of fragments than either of Mirbeau's other more famous books--which are also damn good but suffer a bit as their similarly patchwork episodes don't quite fall together as seamlessly and powerfully as the many tales do here.
  
  Added bonus: the portrait of the local marquis-turned-politician of chapter XVII is so like the current U.S. president that I read the entire chapter open mouthed. All of the details, the way the more heartless, conniving, and dismissive of his people he is the more they love him, the more he lies to them the more they love him, and that tale's climax--the story of his fleecing the retired postman who moves to his district--is such an apt portrait of all of Trump's shyster qualities and abuse of political power for personal gain it left me speechless. Le plus ce change...
• 
  İpek Dadakçı

  Fransız yazar Octave Mirbeau’nun 1901 yılında gazetede yayınladığı hikayeleri bir araya getirerek oluşturduğu bir roman Bir Sinir Hastasının 21 Günü. Eser boyunca, Pireneler’de bir sanatoryumda kalan baş karakter Georges Vasseur, burada karşılaştığı tanıdıklarıyla ilgili trajikomik hikayeler anlatıyor. Başlarda sığ, kendini beğenmiş ve duyarsız burjuvazinin eleştirisi gibi dursa da hikayeler ilerledikçe çok daha derin bir hicivle karşılaşıyorsunuz. Mirbeau çok mizahi ve eğlenceli bir dille toplumdaki adaletsizlikleri, adalet sistemini, sağlık sistemini, bürokratları, politikacıları, siyasi düzeni, sömürgeciliği, ırkçılığı ve toplumdaki diğer aksaklıkları eleştiriyor. Eser, muazzam bir toplumsal ve politik hiciv. Mirbeau’nun dili o kadar eğlenceli ki yer yer kahkahalar attım okurken ama eleştirdiği konular da bir o kadar utanç verici, saniyeler sonra güldüğüm için utandım. Bu duyguları aynı anda okura yaşatabilmesi çok hoşuma gitti. Oldukça akıcı ve sürükleyici bir metin aynı zamanda. Çok ama çok sevdim.
• 
  Orçun

  Imagine a man goes to Pyrenees to be cured by spa, but he encounters all the weird people he has escaped and hears many weird stories during these encounters. The book consists of: 1. framing story of chronically disturbed and melancholic George Vasseur; 2. the stories of the people he met; 3. the stories told by the people he met – in the end, we have a sum of somehow interconnected stories rather than a conventional novel. Two third of the book has superb satirical qualities: A parade of grotesque, half-crazy and really crazy characters, most of whom belong to upper class and that is fair enough to be the target of Mirbeau’s rage. With a style witty and bleak at the same time, he mocks with aristocracy, bourgeoisie, politicians, militarists, colonialists, clerics, psychiatrists, etc. Basically, he hates everything in the right-wing – very pure and fair anger. And he tries to prove that the man outside is not different than the ones locked in madhouse; everyone has a gap to be filled by certain obsessions. Towards the end of the book, the stories become bleaker and creepier with a certain focus on misery and murder. There is still a morbid sense of humor, but the narrative is more naturalistic, or rather, decadent.
  This book once again proved to me that Mirbeau is one of the great critics of society and one of the harshest satirists in the same league with Swift, Bierce and Saltykov-Schedrine. As the translator Vicari mentions in his preface, “hypocrites are eternal” and Mirbeau’s all attacks (especially those on casual racism) are still valid.
• 
  Ben Oreper

  “Scenic landmarks: is there anything more hair-raising, more promising of torture ...? Scenic landmarks, where you see the actual physical shape- whether formed into glacial crystallizations or ponderous stalactites- of the endless, repetitive, non-stop drivel of everyone who visits them. Consider this: once, in Douarnenez there was an old oak tree and, next to the old oak, an old, ruined, dried-up well... In Douarnenez there also happened to be a breathtaking sea and an amazing natural light, even through the fogs that were tinted delightfully pink, or gold, or gray above the sea ... But no one ever went there to look at the sea, since the sea was not a classic and highly recommended scenic landmark at Douarnenez... Everyone trooped in worshipful processions to the old oak and the old well.. They said to each other. "Have you seen the amazing scenic landmark at Douarnenez yet? Have you seen it…!”
  And of course, painters immortalized it: more than twenty thousand sat down a few meters away from that old oak and implacably painted it……. It was also seen in souvenir shops, re-produced on stones, on nacreous seashells, on bottles ... It died, choking on its own glory, sick of hearing the same inanities from everyone's mouth for fifty years ... At least oak trees have the good taste to die… Why not mountains?”
  
  Recommended reading when away from home, physically, mentally, spiritually, or otherwise; also delightful for the voyeuristic thrill of talking mad shit about every single public figure in turn of the 19th century France and the kind of people who vacation in “scenic” places to alleviate the Big Sad
• 
  Nik Maack

  I didn't enjoy this as much as the other books I've read by Mirbeau. This one is not so much a novel, as a collection of fragments and disjointed stories. There are some brilliant, moving, disturbing bits in here. Much of it could be turned into novels.
  
  It's also so very rare for me to encounter someone who expresses thoughts and feelings I share. Eccentric people are a delight, because they're not like everyone else. The church and politicians are corrupt, and will say whatever they can to accumulate money and power. The poor are just as human as the rich, and yet we treat them like garbage. What is wrong with humanity that we are so terrible? Why do people do what they do? What is all of this for?
  
  There are also some terrifying bits thrown in: men who kill for pleasure, or out of madness, or to merely feel alive.
  
  There's a lot here in this book. If you can get past some of the boring bits, you'll be well rewarded with great prose and fun stories. Just don't expect a novel, where one chapter flows into the next. This is more like a book of short stories and character sketches.
• 
  Ersin Özdoğan

  Kitap karakterimiz Georges Vasseur'un Pireneler'de geçirdiği 21 gün boyunca kah karşılaştığı, kah hatırladığı dostlarının başından geçen ilginç olayları okura anlatısından oluşmakta.
  
  Bu hatıralar kimi zaman trajikomik, kimi zamanda gerçekten iç burkan kısa aktarmalardan ibaret.
  
  Yazar Octave Mirbeau bizi Vesseur vasıtası ile kimi zaman bir akıl hastanesinin bahçesine, kimi zaman bir bakanın itiraflarına veyahut bir milletvekilinin, bir suçlunun yada basit bir köylünün başından geçenlere tanık ediyor.
  
  Dönemin Fransa'sını bürokrasi, demokrasi, kilise ve ordu üzerinden eleştirirken aslında bir çok konunun günümüzde bile hâlâ değişmeden geldiği güncel bir bakış açısı sunuyor.
  
  Gönül rahatlığı ile okumayı düşünenlere önerebilirim.
  
  Kırılma'nın ardından Üç nokta yayınlarından okuduğum ikinci kitap oldu. Yayınevini bundan sonra daha yakından takip edeceğim. Gerçekten çok iyi işlere imza atıyorlar.
• 
  Irina

  5 starts for Mirbeau but a few less for the translation. So often I shook my head, especially when an obvious contemporary language was used. I wonder, who does actually review translations of these works before their publication ...
• 
  Tamar Nagel

  5 stars for the book, 3 for the translation. Incisive, dark, but not overly pessimistic— Mirbeau’s commentary still rings true today.
  
  
• 
  L.S. Popovich

  Octave Mirbeau is very similar to Jonathan Swift. If you like one, you'll probably enjoy the other.
  The scathing satire in this book isn't for everyone, but it is certainly entertaining. The only problem I found with this so-called novel is the construction. Think of it as a series of vignettes and stories concocted with very clear lampooning in mind, and cobbled into a scenario as thin as they come.
  
  I was reminded of Magic Mountain - guy at a sanatorium, observing people. But the characters you meet in this book are beyond outrageous. They betray their fascinations and obsessions in every sentence. Woven into the fabric of the narrative is a bold lack of shame. Mirbeau relishes his wit. I found the use of ellipses distracting. Like Celine, they were an integral part of every sentence. Instead of analyzing their significance, I tended to ignore them.
  
  As an experiment, I would call this book wildly successful. As a novel, I'd label it eccentric, an anti-novel. Mirbeau is a caricature artist at bottom. Torture Garden was more enjoyable, in my opinion because I have a soft spot for voyages. The connective tissue was more immersive, and the satire less blatant. But this is still a must-read for appreciators of Zola, Celine, Swift, and the like.
• 
  Agnesca

  Pas mal, bien écrit, mais...
  Je l'ai acheté avec un bandeau "une cure de rire". Et effectivement le début semblait prometteur (un bourgeois qui doit partir en vacances à cause de son statut social, les vacances, le voyage, quelque chose dont on n'a pas forcément envie, mais qui se fait, qu'on se sent obligé de faire). Mais par la suite, c'est plutot le coté "sombre" qui a dominé... Peinture de caractères humains peu sympathiques... Et plus trop de lien avec la cure à la montagne du début..
  Donc avis mitigé