In Mirbeau's novel Le Jardin des supplices (1899), the circular representation,
completed and relayed by design of the plant, should be read violently. The reader
conceives some philosophical influences or convergences. The Narcissus myth is
subjected here to a literary transmutation. The novel tells a personal obsession; it
becomes a reconciliation between earlier fictions [L'Abbé Jules (1888), Dans le ciel
(1892-1893)] and his dramatic work which is coming.