Plot Summary
Inspired by the art of the Impressionists – using Claude Monet and, mainly, Vincent Van Gogh as models for its central characters –, Dans le ciel conveys the author’s growing conviction that the only worthwhile art communicated its striving for the incommunicable and that the finished work could express no more than the frustration of its goals.
A series of interlocking narratives, the novel begins by relating the creative failures of the self-styled novelist Georges, who produces nothing but an unfinished autobiography, then chronicles the poignant struggles of the painter Lucien, whose inability to complete his masterpiece culminates with his suicide when he severs his own hand. It is with the discovery of the terrible fate of the self-mutilating artist that Mirbeau’s truncated narrative is itself left in suspension.
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