Customer Reviews

Calvaire (Empire of the Senses)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Although usually considered a decadent, Mirbeau simply uses the decadent mode as a way of revealing the hypocracies of modern society. He combines psychosexual realism and sociological naturalism to incite feelings of perverse dread with the goel of destroying all systems - religious, moral, and political. Total anarchy is the goal. Similar to Huysmans, Baudilaire, and synbolist writers, he specialized in sexological decadence. He sees human relationships in terms of master/slave, victum and victumizer. Clearly one of the most immoral books, focasing on the inherent cruelty hidden in female sexuality, this book also has sado-masochistic episodes, Tons of bizarre sexual devience, and a pervasive sense of the vial, impure, un-natural, aspects of human desire. Indeed, he seems intensley obsessed with the extremes of perverse erotisism and its subversive impact on society. Mirbeau seems hell-bent on disfiguring the female bodily and spiritualy. Only satisfied when the extremes of Man's degenerate pathology has been reached, Mirbeau revels in the complete ahnilhilation of all vaules, morals, and social orders. Plungeing into the most hidden realms of morbid fantacy, this is a classic tale of vice and evil. Highly recommended to all fans of great literature.