{"id":58767,"date":"2012-11-05T01:49:41","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T01:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=58767"},"modified":"2012-11-13T09:44:48","modified_gmt":"2012-11-13T09:44:48","slug":"what-octave-mirabeau-said-about-ceylon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/what-octave-mirabeau-said-about-ceylon\/","title":{"rendered":"What Octave Mirabeau Said About Ceylon!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Laksiri Fernando<\/a><\/span> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Dr Laksiri Fernando<\/p><\/div>\n

Octave Mirbeau\u2019s \u201c<\/a>The Torture Garden\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span> is undoubtedly a classic novel, but a controversial one. Different people appreciate it for different reasons. Sadistic beauty or cruelty, literary brilliance, poetic humour, powerful critique against politicians and bureaucracy are some. He was also sarcastic about scientists and intellectuals. It was once described as \u201cthe most sickening work of art in the nineteenth century.\u201d<\/p>\n

I recently reviewed it for Torture: Asian and Global Perspectives, <\/em><\/strong>a publication by the Asian Human Rights Commission<\/a><\/span>. The reason was that the novel, irrespective of being a fiction, powerfully depicts the horrors of torture, practiced both in the West and the East (particularly China), and some of the events and methods narrated are based on \u2018some history.\u2019 For example, the story relates the brutal beheading of our \u2018child hero\u2019 Madduma Bandara in 1814 by the last King of Kandy, Sri Wickrema Rajasinghe, but attributes it to the British by mistake or by purpose.<\/p>\n

But that is not the only reason why the novel could be of some interest to the Sri Lankan readers. There are so many other interesting references to Ceylon, not necessarily complimentary though, and amusingly, there are similarities between the politics of today and politics in France of that time where the story actually begins. To understand the nature or nuances, the context of the novel needs to be understood.<\/p>\n

The novel was first published in 1899 during the scandalous Dreyfus Affair, where an Army Captain was framed for \u2018conviction of treason\u2019 whereas the real culprit was another. Anyone can find references to this incident easily. This \u2018affair\u2019 is sarcastically criticised in the novel and one may even find some similarity to the \u2018Fonseka trials<\/a><\/span>\u2019 in Sri Lanka recently.<\/p>\n

Titled Le Jardin des Supplices<\/em><\/strong>, novel was translated from the French to English by Alvah Bessie in 1929. There are several editions to the book, but the present review is based on the Bookkake (London) publication in 2008, now available online as Google book with an excellent introduction by Tom McCarthy.<\/p>\n

The Story <\/strong><\/p>\n

The narrator goes anonymous; \u201cmy name matters little,\u201d he says. As a \u2018political henchman\u2019 par excellence he has \u201ccaused great suffering to others as well as to himself.\u201d Let us call him Frank.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwelve years ago, no longer knowing what to do\u2026my candidacy was officially supported by the cabinet which, no longer knowing what to do with me.\u201d \u201cOn this occasion I held a solemn and intimate interview with the Minister, who was my friend and old school-chum<\/strong>.\u201d It looks like Sri Lanka! He was nominated to contest an agricultural district and then the Minister advices him to do the following. The Minister\u2019s name is given, Eugene Mortain.<\/p>\n

\u201cPromise fabulous crops \u2013 extraordinary chemical fertilizers \u2013 free. Promise rail roads, canals, routs for transportation of this interesting and patriotic vegetable. Announce reduction in taxes, bonuses for the farmers, atrocious duties on competitive products \u2013 anything you like!\u201d But the \u2018poor-fellow\u2019 gets badly defeated at the election. As he says, \u201cI faithfully followed this program [fooling the voters] which my powerful friend had laid out for me, and I was wrong. I was not elected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then comes a more fabulous offer from the Minister, of course officially endorsed by the cabinet. Our \u2018hero\u2019 is sent to Asia to carry out some pseudo-scientific investigations. As the Minister offered, \u201cIt involves going to India, Ceylon, I believe, to drag the sea, in the gulfs, and study what the scientists call the pelagic ooze, you understand?\u201d<\/p>\n

Minister also adds that, \u201cAh, my lad you won\u2019t be bored down there. Ceylon is marvellous. They say there are extraordinary women there, little lace makers \u2013 beautiful \u2013 temperamental! It\u2019s the earthly paradise!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBah!\u201d He cried. \u201cAfter all I could easily be an embryologist once in my life. What do I risk? Science won\u2019t die of it. It\u2019s been through the mill! Done! I accept the expedition to Ceylon.\u201d He adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cArmed with letters of recommendations to the authorities at Ceylon, I finally embarked at Marseille one splendid afternoon, on the Saghalien,\u201d he says. Saghalien is the name of the ship. Frank goes as a \u2018celebrated scientist.\u2019 On the ship, he becomes slowly friendly with an English woman everyone calls Miss Clara, who lives in China. They pass Naples, Port Said and many other places. The crossing of the Red Seas is the most excruciating, the heat is crushing. They cross the gulf, see the coast of the Somaliland, but no \u2018sea pirates\u2019 like today.<\/p>\n

Clara is the \u2018heroin\u2019 of our story, with whom our \u2018hero\u2019 is infatuated with. Clara is the strong character. There is a psychological angle to the novel with admiration for feminism; love and sex as part of it.<\/p>\n

Before Colombo <\/strong><\/p>\n

Even before reaching Colombo, Frank studied the available information about the country and says the following.<\/p>\n

\u201cI profited by leisure to inform myself about Ceylon, its customs and landscapes, and to construct an idea of the life I would lead down there in those terrible tropics.\u201d \u201cEven after eliminating the exaggerated, boastful, and mendacious elements of traveller\u2019s tales\u2026\u201d what has he found to report?<\/p>\n

\u201cI was enchanted by what I read \u2013 particularly by this detail, reported by a sober German savant: that in the suburbs of Colombo there exists, amid fairy gardens by the sea, a marvellous villa bungalow, as they say, in which a rich and eccentric Englishman maintains a sort of harem where all races of India, from the black Tamoules to the sinous bayaderes [graceful dancers] of Lahore, and the demoniac bacchantes [devilish nudes] of Benares, are represented by perfect specimens of femininity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely made up my mind to find some means of gaining access to this amateur polygamist, and to confine my studies of comparative embryology to that spot.\u201d But after reaching Colombo, there is no mention about this \u2018spot,\u2019 let alone \u2018studies of comparative embryology.\u2019<\/p>\n

Eugene (the Minister) also had told him about the country, its size, \u201cBriefly, when you have travelled over a hundred square miles of countryside, no matter where, you have seen everything.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ll see nature\u2026trees\u2026flowers!\u201d But Frank does not have much appetite for nature. \u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned, trees get on my nerves,\u201d he says. He comes to know about various palm trees, coconuts, bananas, mangoes, shaddock and pandanus and says, \u201cIf I can gather in their shade all sorts of pretty little women who munch between their lips something better than betel-nut.\u201d He takes special pun about the coconut tree. \u201cCoconut tree or cocotte-tree! I only like its truly Parisian classification.\u201d In French, \u2018cocotte\u2019 could mean prostitute.<\/p>\n

It was before reaching Colombo that our hero reveals to Clara, now his \u2018girlfriend\u2019 that he is not actually a scientist. Clara is not surprised. \u201cWell,\u201d she said simply, \u201cthat doesn\u2019t astonish me very much. And I honestly believe all scientists are like you.\u201d She relates this story in Ceylon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know one of them,\u201d she went on. \u201cHe was a naturalist\u2026of your type. He had been sent by the British Government to study the coffee-parasite on the plantations in Ceylon. Well for three months, he did not leave Colombo. He spent his time playing poker and getting drunk on champagne.\u201d This is a reference to the Hemileia vastarix<\/em> in 1869 that destroyed the coffee plantation and sparked the birth of the tea industry in Ceylon, but no one could be sure whether the story about that scientist is true or not. It doesn\u2019t need to be true.<\/p>\n

Revelation of Ceylon <\/strong><\/p>\n

Our hero was excited to see Ceylon, what his Minister friend described as a \u2018paradise.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cOne morning, coming out on deck, I could make out, thanks to the transparence of the atmosphere, and as clearly as though I were treading its soil, the enchanted island of Ceylon; that green and red island crowned by the fairy like rosy whiteness of Adam\u2019s Peak.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had already been warned of its approach the evening before by the new perfumes of the sea and mysterious invasion of butterflies which, after accompanying the ship for a few hours, suddenly disappeared. And without desiring anything more, both Clara and I found it exquisite that the island had extended us a welcome through the medium of these dazzling and poetic messengers. I had reached such a point of sentimental poeticism that the mere sight of butterfly made all the strings of tenderness and ecstasy vibrant in my breast.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that morning the actual sight of Ceylon caused me great anguish \u2013 more than anguish \u2013 terror.\u201d This was not because there was anything particularly wrong with Ceylon, but because of the feeling that Frank had to leave Clara who was going to China and he had to stay in Ceylon.<\/p>\n

It appeared \u201cthe end of the prodigious dream which Clara\u2019s love had been for me.\u201d \u201cI desired none but her; I wanted none but her. Nothing any longer existed outside or beyond her.\u201d \u201cHow could I accept the fact that, after having been conquered \u2013 soul, body an brain \u2013 by this irrevocable, indissoluble and martyrizing love, I would have to give it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thereafter, whatever he saw in Ceylon was negative, funny and terrible. But for an enlightened Sri Lankan reader, it could be amusing and revealing \u2013 of course, if you are not a pathetic \u2018patriot.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIt meant the nightmare that my head was in Ceylon, my feat in China, separated by abysses of ocean, and that I would continue to live in these two stumps which could never be united.\u201d This sentiment is like today, the governing politicians feeling that their feet are in Sri Lanka, though heads are in China!<\/p>\n

His feelings were subjective and not objective. On the objective side he admitted, \u201cThe Sea was gentle, calm and radiant. It exhaled the perfumes of a Utopian shore, a blossoming orchard and a bed of love, which made me weep.\u201d \u201cThe ship touches at Colombo two days. Then it leaves again.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Clara \u201cIt\u2019s so simple!\u201d \u201cWell, stop trembling\u2026stop weeping\u2026and come with me.\u201d \u201cI have powerful friends in China. They could undoubtedly do a lot for you!\u201d \u201cIn China life is free, joyous, complete, unconventional, unprejudiced, lawless\u2026at least for us<\/strong>. No other limits to liberty or to love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now he could go to China \u201cinstead of rotting away in Ceylon.\u201d The invitation is extended. \u201cHad I actually crawled far enough into the skin of a scientist to imagine that I was going to discover the cell, by plunging into the gulf of the Singhalese coast?\u201d he asked from himself.<\/p>\n

Visiting Colombo <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt had been decided that Clara and I would spend the two days in port of Colombo visiting the city and the suburbs where my friend had stayed and which she knew thoroughly.\u201d Now all along he had negative feelings of the country. About the climate, this is what he said; he tried to refute the concept of paradise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe heat there was torrid, so torrid that the coolest places \u2013 by comparison \u2013 in this atrocious land (where the scientists have located the earthly paradise), such as the gardens on the banks of the strand, seemed to me to be stifling steam rooms.\u201d He even had some repulsion for the people. Referring to the waiters and bellboys at the hotel, he said, \u201cthe boys who, by the colour of their skin and the structure of their bodies, recalled the na\u00efve gingerbread men of our Parisian fairs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWalking on Slave Island, which is the Bois<\/em> of the place, or in Pettah, which is its Mouffetard<\/em> quarter, we only encountered horrible Englishwomen out of an operetta, togged out as though for a carnival, in light costumes, half European and half Hindu.\u201d Bois<\/em> is a red light area in Paris and Mouffetard<\/em> is a rich shopping and business area. It appears that even those days kurta<\/em> (loose shirt) with trouser was popular with elite women.<\/p>\n

\u201cSinghalese still more horrible than the Englishwomen, old at twelve years, wrinkled as prunes, twisted as aged vine-stalks, caved in like ruined straw huts, with gums like bleeding wounds, lips burned by the areca-nut and teeth the colour of an old pipe.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was rather disappointed. \u201cI sought in vain for the voluptuous women, the negresses with their wise love-techniques, the pert little lace makers of whom that liar Eugene Mortain had spoken, with their eyes so significantly provocative.\u201d Then he says, \u201cAnd with all my heart I pitied the poor scientists they sent here, with their problematic mission of discovering the secret of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact Frank was joking with Clara on these matters and commented, \u201cBut I realised Clara had no taste for these facile and coarse jokes, and I found it prudent to attenuate them\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

In Colombo, he also goes to \u2018Kolpetty\u2019 that is to sort out his \u2018scientific matters.\u2019 As he says, \u201cAmong the letters of recommendation I had brought from Paris, there was one to a certain Sir Oscar Terwick who\u2026was the president of the Association of Tropical Embryology and British Entomology in Colombo<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is some description of Kolpetty, \u201cHe lived far off in a suburb called Kolpetty which was, so to speak, the Passy<\/em> of Colombo.\u201d \u201cThere, in the midst of luxurious gardens, graced by the inevitable coconut tree, in spacious and bizarre villas, the rich merchants and notable officials of the city lived.\u201d He also mentions about \u201ca sort of little square shaded by immense teakwood trees.\u201d Passy<\/em> in Paris probably is the wealthiest residential area. It appears that those days, Colombo meant only the centre, but not the whole of Colombo city like today, thus Kolpetty was a \u2018far off place\u2019 for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI gave a detailed and acted version of this interview\u201d with Sir Terwick. \u201cShe laughed like a mad woman.\u201d \u201cThe next morning, after a savage night of love, we put to sea again en route to China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slaughter of Madduma Bandara <\/strong><\/p>\n

The story of the beheading of the \u2018child hero\u2019 of Sri Lanka, Madduma Bandara, comes much later in the novel, when Frank and Clara were discussing torture in China. The story is related by none other than Clara herself who has claimed to visit Ceylon several times. Even those days it appears that the \u2018international community\u2019 was concerned about human rights in Sri Lanka! The full description is the following.<\/p>\n

\u201cAh, I remember the strange sensation I felt when, at Kandy, the gloomy former capital of Ceylon, I went up the steps of the temple where the English had stupidly, without torture, slaughtered the little Modeliar princes who, legends tell us, were so charming\u2026like those skilfully made Chinese ikons, with so hieratically clam and pure of grace, and their golden halos and their long hands pressed together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt that what had happened there on those sacred steps, still uncleansed of that blood by eighty years of violent possession \u2013 was something more horrible than a human massacre; the destruction of a precious, trouncing and innocent beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n

What a nice twist of the story for the glee of Sinhala patriotism!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":48998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,3,8],"tags":[6148,6150,6151,6153,6154,6149,6152],"class_list":["post-58767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-colombotelegraph","category-editorial","tag-book-review-octave-mirbeaus-the-torture-garden","tag-book-review-torture-asian-and-global-perspectives","tag-last-king-of-kandy","tag-le-jardin-des-supplices","tag-novel","tag-octave-mirbeaus-the-torture-garden","tag-sri-wickrema-rajasinghe"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Octave Mirabeau Said About Ceylon! - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/what-octave-mirabeau-said-about-ceylon\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Octave Mirabeau Said About Ceylon! 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