a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world. ~"The Mission," Chapter 8 (This passage is quoted in the liner notes of the 1994 Manic Street Preachers album The Holy Bible.) Alas, the gates of life never swing open except upon death, never open except upon the palaces and gardens of death. And the universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden. Blood everywhere and, where there is most life, horrible tormentors who dig your flesh, saw your bones, and retract your skin with sinister, joyful faces. ~"The Garden," Chapter 9 Ah, yes! the Torture Garden! Passions, appetites, greed, hatred, and lies; law, social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering. What I saw today, and what I heard, is no more than a symbol to me of the entire earth. I have vainly sought a respite in quietude and repose in death, and I can find them nowhere. ~"The Garden," Chapter 9 Translations The first Spanish translation, by Ramon Sempau and C. Sos Gautreau, is of 1900 (El Jardín de los suplicios, Barcelona, Casa Editorial Maucci). The book was translated into English and published in 1903. The Italian translation of Jardin des supplices, by Decio Cinti, is of 1917 (Il Giardino dei supplizi, Milan, Sonzogno). Film adaptation A film version of The Torture Garden was released in 1976; it was directed by Christian Gion from a screenplay by French academic/novelist Pascal Lainé and starred Roger Van Hool, Jacqueline Kerry, Tony Taffin, Jean Rougeul, and Jean-Claude Carrière. In its native France, the film retained the title Le Jardin des supplices; it was released in the UK as The Garden of Torment. In January 2021, the UK-based independent DVD and Blu-ray distribution label Nucleus Films announced it was preparing a Blu-ray release of The Garden of Torment for 2021. The 1967 British horror film Torture Garden is unrelated to Mirbeau's novel.