La 628-E8
Encyclopedia
La 628-E8 is a 'novel' by the French novelist and playwright Octave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeau was a French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde...

, published by Fasquelle in 1907. La 628-E8 is noteworthy for its genre indeterminacy. 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
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

, whose colonial exploitation of Belgian Congo
Belgian Congo
The Belgian Congo was the formal title of present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo between King Leopold II's formal relinquishment of his personal control over the state to Belgium on 15 November 1908, and Congolese independence on 30 June 1960.-Congo Free State, 1884–1908:Until the latter...

 rubber and abuse of the indigenous people Mirbeau excoriates. The book then proceeds to the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

, where he finds remembrances of Rembrandt, Van Gogh and also Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...

. 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
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, 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
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...

. 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 “The Death of Balzac”, relating the author’s death agonies while, in an adjoining room, his wife, Madame Hanska, engaged in sexual frolicking with painter Jean Gigoux. 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
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis.-Biography:...

.

Further reading

Kinda Mubaideen and Lolo, Un aller simple pour l'Octavie, Société Octave Mirbeau, Angers, 2007, 62 pages. Éléonore Reverzy - Guy Ducrey, L'Europe en automobile - Octave Mirbeau, écrivain voyageur, Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2009, 320 pages.

External links

Octave Mirbeau, La 628-E8. Octave Mirbeau, La Mort de Balzac. Pierre Michel's foreword.
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