Every Rose...

The Torture Garden is a novel I have read twice in my life, in two different translations. The first, by Alvah Bessie, is widely available and reprinted.

The novel itself is an erotic and forbidden classic: it has been reputedly hailed as the "Most sickening novel of the Nineteenth Century." Or so says counter cultural publisher and guru V. Vale in his introduction to the Re/Search Books edition. It is a novel replete with gruesome descriptions; it is, however, not likely to erotically excite the reader, unless sadism and butchery be to his or her personal taste.

The lynch pin of the novel pits the philosophical qualms and moral hypocrisies of Western European man against the perceived Eastern penchant for casual barbarity and cruelty. But, this is not simply a politically incorrect (because historically dated) condemnation of perceived "primitive" cultures; it is, in point of fact, a mocking and subversive condemnation of the hypocrisy of European ethical mores, as well as an ideological prosecution of the weak-kneed religious nail-biting of an imperialist race. One that can stride the earth like a mighty behemoth, killing and annihilating every culture or society in its wake, enslaving, and enchaining millions—yet one that blanches at the real, true, and vital primitive spirit of unrestrained, Natural man. The "Noble Savage" of Rousseau here exemplified by a caricature of Asiatic cruelty, one proffered through the racial lens of a man whose anarchic and Darwinian ideal is reflected in the writings of thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche, Sade, and the pseudonymous author of Might is Right, "Ragnar Redbeard" (sometimes claimed as being Australian anarchist poet Arthur Desmond).

The novel itself presents an anonymous protagonist; a minor political functionary who becomes embroiled in a scandal. Fed, like a sacrificial lamb, to the vultures of the political machine, his boss or candidate, or whoever he is working for (it is never made quite clear what transpires here), sends him packing on an Asian excursion, supposedly as a "naturalist," pursuing scientific knowledge in the Near East. He is, of course, nothing of the sort. His ocean voyage through exotic climes leaves him hot, sickened, and in thrall to an hysterical, virtually possessed woman named Clara.

Clara, who it is suggested is bisexual (a fact that would have marked her as a serious social outcast in 1899), is also a hedonist, a sadist; a Darwinist that expands and expounds endlessly upon a cruel, capricious, libertine philosophy that would have made Sade proud. Indeed, The Torture Garden could, most easily, be mistaken for a part of the Sadean oeuvre; there is an obsessive, fetishistic lingering over the most cruel and sickening, senseless aspects of the human condition, and man's inhumanity to his fellow men. But, this is, as it were with Sade, merely a pointed satire, a way to glean a literary revenge against the tormentors of a mad civilization, one that praises its much-proffered enlightened humanitarian ideals, all the while engaging in the most heinous, brutal, and barbaric treatment of those it deems racial or intellectual "untermensch."

'“But captain,” I objected, “what about peoples' rights? What do you think of that?”

'The officer sneered; and lifting his arms to the sky: "People's rights!” he replied, “it's merely the right we possess to massacre people en masse or singly, with shells or bullets—it doesn't matter—provided that people are duly massacred!” One of the Chinese interposed: “We are not savages, however!” he said.

'“Not savages? and what else are we, I ask you? We are worse savages than the Australian bushmen, since, possessing the knowledge of our savagery, we persist in it. And since it's by war—that is to say theft, pillage and massacre—that we learn to govern, carry on commerce, arbitrate our differences, avenge our honor... Well! We have only to bear with the inconveniences of this state of brutality in which we nevertheless desire to remain. We are brutes—agreed! Let's act like brutes!”

'Then, in a gentle and profound voice, Clara said: “Besides, it would be a sacrilege to fight against death. Death is so beautiful!”'' - Octave Mirbeau, The Torture Garden (1899)

Mirbeau lifts the mask of cultural self-deceit, revealing the sordid, libertine face of fin de siecle decadence, exposing the cancerous, tumescent rot that lay, like a seething, gangrenous living pustule, beneath the smooth, ivory skin of European sensibility. Therein lurks a monstrous, sadistic malignancy, he seems to suggest.

The fate of Annie, Clara's presumed lesbian lover, who is ravaged by elephantiasis, and eventually succumbs, is a metaphor, we think:

'There are so many mysteries here, so many things that can't be understood. Both of us often used to go out on the river in the evening. I must tell you that there was a bayadere from Benares, in a flower—boat... a bewitching creature, my dear, whom the priests had taught certain cursed rites of the ancient Brahman cults. Perhaps it was that... or something else. One night when we were returning from the river, Annie complained of violent pains in the head and loins, and the next day her body was all covered with little purple spots. Her skin, rosier and finer than the althea flower, was hardening—thickening, swelling, and became an ashy grey. Great tumors and monstrous tubercles arose. It was something frightful. And the disease which at first had attacked her legs, reached her thighs, her abdomen, her breasts, her face. Oh, her face, her face! Imagine an enormous pouch, a disgusting sack, all grey and striated with brown blood, and which hung and swayed with the least movement she made. Her eyes—her eyes, my darling! You could see no more of them than tiny, reddish, oozing holes. I still wonder if it's possible!” She twined the golden lock of her hair about her fingers. In his sleep the dog's paw had slipped along her silk tunic, entirely uncovering the globe of her breast, whose nipple arose, pink as a young flower. “Yes, I still wonder sometimes whether I'm not dreaming,” she said.'—The Torture Garden (1899)

One is here reminded of Sir Frederick Treves's description of Joseph Carey Merrick, in his classic essay "The Elephant Man (1923)," which has inspired a veritable sub-genre of books, plays and films in the intervening decades. In that august work, Treves exemplifies the rigid, narcissistic arrogance that typifies the Victorian response to that which is perceived as repulsive or deviant. Joseph Merrick is rescued from being treated "like a dog," by his social bettors. Presented with a new suit of clothing, a nice home, and socially fashionable friends, a charade is maintained that he is "one of us." "Redeemed," as it were, from a life of cruel exploitation in a low-class freak show, lorded over by a collection of cruel, petty tyrants and back-alley exploitation artists.

Yet, Merrick is, ultimately, a moral burden for Treves (at least in the fictional adaptations) as he has simply, seemingly, changed hands, or been sold from one master to another—remaining a "nine days wonder," Treves broods over the idea that he has simply made Merrick into another monstrosity to be equally, hypocritically, put on display once more—for a society reeling from "deformitomania" (to use the term coined by a cartoonist of the period), a literal "taste for monsters." That taste, exemplified by the freak shoppes and popular back-alley entertainments that treated the disfigured and grotesque as veritable whores for working class and impoverished slum-dwellers willing to cough up a few pence, had become transferred to the upper crust denizens of Treves' world; and Treves was now the very freak show impresario he so bitterly detested as a "vile" example of what he must have perceived as a very "dirty" class of underlings (perhaps he even believed in the now-discredited science of phrenology).

At any rate, the comparison of late-Victorian puritanism and hypocrisy, in light of the reality of British imperialism in the Near East and elsewhere, is the fulcrum of the novel's philosophical lynch pin—that men, bestial though they may be, will try to account and excuse their cruelties by reason of a philosophical safety-valve or escape hatch—or, to be more clear, just a damn, self-exculpating excuse why OUR barbarity is sanctified, while the barbarity of our common, crude, native fellows should be roundly condemned.

The Torture Garden is, if anything, a parody of the story of Genesis. In that immortal tale, Adam and Eve desport in a supernal, paradisical state of being, in a garden of delights that Yahweh God has prepared for them. A sacred tree, of the "Knowledge of Good and Evil," is denied access to them, the fruit of which would render them morally culpable, because delivering them from a state of innocence into one of "Original Sin." Eve, tempted of the wily Serpent (in modern Christian theology, Lucifer or even Satan), eats of an apple. Woman, being the child-bearer, the object of sexual desire, is the conduit by which sin enters the world. Giving Adam her bite of the apple, she causes them to be cast out from the holy garden, which is then compassed about by an "angel," holding a fiery, two-edged sword; if, that is, we remember the whole story correctly.

The anonymous narrator and Clara are a sort of anti-Adam and Eve: their "Eden" is not a garden wherein they walk with God, communing with Nature in an undefiled state, to eat the fruit of the earth without toil, knowing not that they are naked. Instead, it is a ravishing botanical wonder wherein, in the niches and nooks, among the beautiful, poetical descriptions of wondrous blooms and multi-colored, creeping vines, we have humans pierced, pulled apart by ropes, hanging suspended from the trees, tortured beneath a massive iron bell (this delights Clara to no end, it seems); and we see the "rat torture" expert, the "roly-poly" as Clara refers to him, who gives us a sickening description of the torture he has invented and perfected, but, bewails, sadly, his regret that it is no longer in vogue.

And to Clara, this is not monstrous. This predation and torture is a normal aspect of Nature that is cruel, capricious, and unforgiving to the weal—again, shades of Sade.

“Monsters, monsters! But there are no monsters! What you call monsters are superior forms, or forms beyond your understanding. Aren't the gods monsters? Isn't a man of genius a monster, like a tiger or a spider, like all individuals who live beyond social lies, in the dazzling and divine immortality of things? Why, I too then-am a monster!”

― Octave Mirbeau, Torture Garden

(Earlier, the couple has visited a Chinese torture dungeon, a prison called the bagnio, wherein men bound hand and foot and starved, are cruelly thrown scraps of food by Clara, as if she were feeding ducks. Regressed to the point of animalistic savagery, they are described in a hideous, ghastly fashion, their drooling mouths and grasping, separate faces trying to reach the rotted scraps of meat. It is one of the most horrific, ogreish examples of horror fiction this author has ever read, and must not fail to rouse the reader, if he or she be of normal psychological temperament).

The novel ends with Clara becoming demonically possessed—aboard a sampan, or boat, she is temporarily cared for by a Chinese woman who knows her fits of exultation at torture only too well. Aboard the boat, presumed European expatriates, and the affluent English who are visiting China as colonial conquerors, seem to have adopted the worship of strange, savage, primordial deities—Kalis that demand ritual slaughter, offerings of pain, or penance, torture, and blood. It is perhaps fitting that the novel should end on an anti-sacred barque, traveling the waters of a metaphorical Styx; the novel opens with some bon-vivants at a gentleman's club listening in rapt attention at the story of an unnamed young man who credits himself with having killed a complete stranger on a train. Our narrator observes:

“Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he will always see that word: murder—immortally inscribed upon the pediment of that vast slaughterhouse—humanity.”

― Octave Mirbeau, The Torture Garden

Echoing Ragnar Redbeard, Clara confesses to the smitten but horrified Anonymous Narrator:

“Look here, before you and around you! There is not a grain of sand that has not been bathed in blood, and what is that grain of sand itself, if not the dust of death? But how rich this blood is, and how fertile is the dust!”

― Octave Mirbeau, The Torture Garden

The Torture Garden is a novel that the thoughtful and discerning reader will not soon forget, an expostulation of both love and pain, cruelty and caprice, moral cowardice, Victorian hypocrisy, and the ravishing underbelly of what was, at the time, polite cafe society, to expose the hideous secrets lurking, like elephantine tumors, beneath the pale, silken skin.