Le Calvaire
Octave Mirbeau
 Le Calvaire is an autobiographical novel, in which Mirbeau romanticizes his devastating affair with a woman of dubious morals, Judith Vimmer, who appears as "Juliette Roux" in the novel. The main character, Jean Mintié, who has literary ambition and the potential to become a good writer, is incapable of overcoming his sexual obsessions. Victimized by a woman and reduced to a state of humiliated impotence, he tries to transform his suffering into an impulse to create. His redemptive passion is modeled on the Passion of Christ. In the final pages, the image of Christ is replaced by the corpses of men fallen in the battle of love.