Lettres de l'Inde

Mirbeau’s original motivation had been to outdo Gaulois journalist Robert de Bonnières, in Mirbeau's view a pretentious man of the world who himself had undertaken a genuine journey through India, from which he had sent back his travel memories, first published in La Revue bleue and then collected in 1880 as Mémoires d’aujourd’hui (Memoirs of Today).

However, Mirbeau's text is also a ghost-written work written out of financial necessity, as he set in literary form, embellishing and enlivening them, dispatches by his friend François Deloncle, who had been sent on an official mission to India by Jules Ferry.

A true member of the literary proletariat, Octave Mirbeau, at the time, still did not enjoy the freedom to publish under his own name, continuing to write under the “influence” of others.

In the book, Mirbeau reveals his fascination for Indian civilization, rooted in detachment, renunciation of material attachments, and stillness of the mind.

Mirbeau was similarly interested in Cingalese Buddhism, which he presents as a religion without God and that could liberate man’s thinking and rid it of fanaticism.