Guy de Maupassant

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (French pronunciation: ​[gi d(ə) mo.pa.ˈsɑ̃] ; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents.

A protégé of Flaubert, Maupassant's stories are characterized by their economy of style and efficient, effortless dénouements. Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s and several describe the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught in the conflict, emerge changed. He authored some 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse. The story "Boule de Suif" ("Ball of Fat", 1880) is often accounted his masterpiece. His most unsettling horror story, "Le Horla" (1887), was about madness and suicide.

Biography

 

Guy de Maupassant 7 years old

 

Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5, 1850 at the château de Miromesnil, near Dieppe in the Seine-Inférieure (now Seine-Maritime) department in France. He was the first son of Laure Le Poittevin and Gustave de Maupassant, both from prosperous bourgeois families. When Maupassant was 11 and his brother Hervé was five, his mother, an independent-minded woman, risked social disgrace to obtain a legal separation from her husband.

After the separation, Laure Le Poittevin kept her two sons. With the father’s absence, Maupassant’s mother became the most influential figure in the young boy’s life. She was an exceptionally well read woman and was very fond of classical literature, especially Shakespeare. Until the age of thirteen, Guy happily lived with his mother, to whom he was deeply devoted, at Étretat, in the Villa des Verguies, where, between the sea and the luxuriant countryside, he grew very fond of fishing and outdoor activities. At age thirteen, he was sent to a small seminary near Rouen for classical studies.

In October 1868, at the age of 18, he saved the famous poet Algernon Charles Swinburne from drowning off the coast of Étretat. As he entered junior high school, he met Gustave Flaubert.

He first entered a seminary at Yvetot, but deliberately got himself expelled. From his early education he retained a marked hostility to religion. Then he was sent to the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen where he proved a good scholar indulging in poetry and taking a prominent part in theatricals.

The Franco-Prussian War broke out soon after his graduation from college in 1870; he enlisted as a volunteer. In 1871, he left Normandy and moved to Paris where he spent ten years as a clerk in the Navy Department. During this time his only recreation and relaxation was canoeing on the Seine on Sundays and holidays.

Gustave Flaubert took him under his protection and acted as a kind of literary guardian to him, guiding his debut in journalism and literature. At Flaubert's home he met Émile Zola and the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, as well as many of the proponents of the realist and naturalist schools.

In 1878, he was transferred to the Ministry of Public Instruction and became a contributing editor to several leading newspapers such as Le Figaro, Gil Blas, Le Gaulois and l'Écho de Paris. He devoted his spare time to writing novels and short stories.

In 1880 he published what is considered his first masterpiece, "Boule de Suif", which met with instant and tremendous success. Flaubert characterized it as "a masterpiece that will endure." This was Maupassant's first piece of short fiction set during the Franco-Prussian War, and was followed by short stories such as "Deux Amis", "Mother Savage", and "Mademoiselle Fifi".

The decade from 1880 to 1891 was the most fertile period of Maupassant's life. Made famous by his first short story, he worked methodically and produced two or sometimes four volumes annually. His talent and practical business sense made him wealthy.

In 1881 he published his first volume of short stories under the title of La Maison Tellier; it reached its twelfth edition within two years. In 1883 he finished his first novel, Une Vie (translated into English as A Woman's Life), 25,000 copies of which were sold in less than a year. His second novel Bel Ami, which came out in 1885, had thirty-seven printings in four months.

 

Guy de Maupassant early in his career.

 

His editor, Havard, commissioned him to write more stories, and Maupassant continued to produce them efficiently and frequently. At this time he wrote what many consider to be his greatest novel, Pierre et Jean.

With a natural aversion to society, he loved retirement, solitude, and meditation. He traveled extensively in Algeria, Italy, England, Brittany, Sicily, Auvergne, and from each voyage brought back a new volume. He cruised on his private yacht Bel-Ami, named after his novel. This life did not prevent him from making friends among the literary celebrities of his day: Alexandre Dumas, fils had a paternal affection for him; at Aix-les-Bains he met Hippolyte Taine and became devoted to the philosopher-historian.

Flaubert continued to act as his literary godfather. His friendship with the Goncourts was of short duration; his frank and practical nature reacted against the ambiance of gossip, scandal, duplicity, and invidious criticism that the two brothers had created around them in the guise of an 18th-century style salon.

Maupassant was one of a fair number of 19th-century Parisians who did not care for the Eiffel Tower. He often ate lunch in the restaurant at its base, not out of preference for the food but because it was only there that he could avoid seeing its otherwise unavoidable profile. He and forty-six other Parisian literary and artistic notables attached their names to an elaborately irate letter of protest against the tower's construction, written to the Minister of Public Works.

Maupassant also wrote under several pseudonyms such as Joseph Prunier, Guy de Valmont, and Maufrigneuse (which he used from 1881 to 1885).

In his later years he developed a constant desire for solitude, an obsession for self-preservation, and a fear of death and paranoia of persecution caused by the syphilis he had contracted in his youth. On January 2, 1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat, and was committed to the private asylum of Esprit Blanche at Passy, in Paris, where he died on July 6, 1893.

Guy De Maupassant penned his own epitaph: "I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing." He is buried in Section 26 of the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.

Significance

Maupassant is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story. He delighted in clever plotting, and served as a model for Somerset Maugham and O. Henry in this respect. His stories about expensive jewelry ("The Necklace", "La parure") are imitated with a twist by Maugham ("Mr Know-All", "A String of Beads") and Henry James ("Paste").

Taking his cue from Balzac, Maupassant wrote comfortably in both the high-Realist and fantastic modes; stories and novels such as "L'Héritage" and Bel-Ami aim to recreate Third Republic France in a realistic way, whereas many of the short stories (notably "Le Horla" and "Qui sait?") describe apparently supernatural phenomena.

The supernatural in Maupassant, however, is often implicitly a symptom of the protagonists' troubled minds; Maupassant was fascinated by the burgeoning discipline of psychiatry, and attended the public lectures of Jean-Martin Charcot between 1885 and 1886. This interest is reflected in his fiction.

Legacy

Maupassant is notable as the subject of one of Leo Tolstoy's essays on art: The Works of Guy de Maupassant.

Friedrich Nietzsche's autobiography mentions him in the following text:

"I cannot at all conceive in which century of history one could haul together such inquisitive and at the same time delicate psychologists as one can in contemporary Paris: I can name as a sample – for their number is by no means small, ... or to pick out one of the stronger race, a genuine Latin to whom I am particularly attached, Guy de Maupassant."

Bibliography

Short stories  

• Abandoned
• The Accursed Bread
• The Adopted Son
• An Adventure in Paris
• After
• Alexandre
• All Over
• Allouma
• Ampanget
• The Apparition
• An Artifice
• At Sea
• Bed 29
• The Baroness
• Belhomme's Beast
• The Beggar
• Bertha
• Beside Schopenhauer's Corpse
• The Blind Man
• Boitelle
• "Boule de Suif"
• The Cake
• Chali
• The Capture of Walter Schnaffs
• The Child
• The Christening
• Coco
• A Country Excursion
• A Cremation
• An Old Man
• Clair de Lune
• Clochette
• The Colonel's Ideas
• The Confession
• The Corsican Bandit
• A Coup d'État
• A Coward
• The Cripple
• A Crisis
• The Dead Girl (aka "Was it a Dream?")
• Dead Woman's Secret
• The Deaf Mute
• Denis
• The Devil
• The Diary of a Madman
• Discovery
• The Dispenser of Holy Water
• The Donkey
• The Door
• The Dowry
• Dreams
• The Drunkard
• A Duel
• A Cock Crowed
• The Effeminates
• The Englishman of Etretat
• Epiphany
• The False Gems
• A Family
• A Family Affair
• Farewell
• The Farmer's Wife
• Father Matthew
• A Father's Confession
• The Fishing Hole
• Fascination
• The Father
• Father Milon
• Fear
• The First Snowfall
• Florentine
• Forbidden Fruit
• Forgiveness
• Found on a Drowned Man
• Friend Joseph
• Friend Patience
• The Frontier
• The Gamekeeper
• A Ghost
• Ghosts
• The Grave

• The Graveyard Sisterhood
• The Hairpin
• The Hand
• Growing Old
• Happiness
• Hautot Senior and Hautot Junior
• His Avenger
• The Highway Man
• "The Horla, or Modern Ghosts"
• The Horrible
• A Humble Drama
• The Impolite Sex
• In the Country
• In the Spring
• In the Wood
• Indiscretion
• The Inn
• The Jewelry
• Julie Romaine
• The Kiss
• The Lancer's Wife
• Lasting Love
• Legend of Mont St. Michel
• The Legion of Honor
• Lieutenant Lare's Marriage
• The Little Cask
• Little Louise Roque
• A Lively Friend
• The Log
• Looking Back
• The Love of Long Ago
• Madame Baptiste
• Madame Hermet
• Madame Husson's Rosier
• Madame Parisse
• Madame Tellier's Establishment
• Mademoiselle Cocotte
• "Mademoiselle Fifi"
• Mademoiselle Pearl
• The Maison Tellier
• A Madman
• The Magic Couch
• Magnetism
• The Man with the Pale Eyes
• The Marquis de Fumerol
• Marroca
• Martine
• The Mask
• A Meeting
• Minuet
• Misti
• Miss Harriet
• The Model
• Moiron
• Monsieur Parent
• Moonlight
• The Moribund
• Mother and Son
• A Mother of Monsters
• "Mother Sauvage"
• The Mountain Pool
• The Mustache
• My Twenty-Five Days
• My Uncle Jules
• My Uncle Sosthenes
• My Wife
• "The Necklace"
• A New Year's Gift
• The Night: A Nightmare
• No Quarter (French Le père Milon)
• A Normandy Joke
• Old Amable
• Old Judas
• The Old Man
• Old Mongilet

• On the River
• On a Spring Evening
• The Orphan
• Our Friends The English
• Our Letters
• A Parricide
• The Parrot
• The Patron
• The Penguin's Rock
• "The Piece of String"
• "Pierrot"
• Pierre et Jean ( short Story)
• The Port
• A Portrait
• The Prisoners
• Queen Hortense
• A Queer Night in Paris
• The Question of Latin
• The Rabbit
• A Recollection
• Regret
• The Relic
• Roger's Method
• Roly-Poly (Boule de Suif)
• The Rondoli Sisters
• Rosalie Prudent
• Rose
• Rust
• A Sale
• Saint Anthony
• The Shepherd's Leap
• The Signal
• Simon's Papa
• The Snipe
• The Son
• Solitude
• The Story of a Farm Girl
• A Stroll
• The Spasm
• "Suicides"
• Sundays of a Bourgeois
• The Terror
• The Test
• That Costly Ride
• That Pig of a Morin
• Theodule Sabot's Confession
• The Thief
• Timbuctoo
• Toine
• Tombstones
• A Tress of Hair
• The Trip of the Horla
• "Two Friends"
• Two Little Soldiers
• The Umbrella
• An Uncomfortable Bed
• The Unknown
• "Useless Beauty"
• A Vagabond
• A Vendetta
• En Voyage
• Waiter, a "Bock"
• The Wardrobe
• A Wedding Gift
• Who Knows?
• A Widow
• The Will
• The Wolf
• The Wreck
• The Wrong House
• Yvette Samoris
• A Million (Un Million)
• The Reward
• A Coward
• A Tress of Hair

Novels

• Une Vie (1883)
• Bel-Ami (1885)
• Mont-Oriol (1887)
• Pierre et Jean (1888)
• Fort comme la mort (1889)
• Notre Cœur (1890)

Short-story collections

• Les Soirées de Médan (with Zola, Huysmans et al. Contains Boule de Suif by Maupassant) (1880)
• La Maison Tellier (1881)
• Mademoiselle Fifi (1882)
• Contes de la bécasse (1887)
• Miss Harriet (1884)
• Les Sœurs Rondoli (1884)
• Clair de lune (1884) (contains "Les Bijoux")
• Yvette (1884)
• Toine (1885)
• Contes du jour et de la nuit (1885) (contains "La Parure" or "The Necklace")
• Monsieur Parent (1886)
• La Petite Roque (1886)
• Le Horla (1887)
• Le Rosier de Madame Husson (1888)
• La Main gauche (1889)
• L'Inutile Beauté (1890)

Travel writing

• Au soleil (1884)
• Sur l'eau (1888)
• La Vie errante (1890).

Poetry

• Des vers (1880)