Abstract: Mirbeau is regularly described as obscene. Such a term suits a writer who, in his first five novels, proposes to face reality in its raw presence, and uses obscene effects to challenge his reader. But the obscenity also comes from the mind, being made of traumas, hauntings, hallucinations. Mirbeau therefore integrates this part of mystery, of “depth psychology” into his quest for confrontation with reality, implementing what Michel Raimond called a visionary realism.
