Guy de Maupassant: Short Stories Automatic translate

Guy de Maupassant is one of the most popular writers of the second half of the 19th century. He is the author of six novels, 260 short stories, essays, articles, poems and plays. In 1880, with the publication of Boule de Souif , Maupassant appeared to the reader as a talented and mature author, whose name immediately became known in literary circles. This story overshadowed all the other stories in the collection.

This allowed Maupassant himself to say that he "broke into literature like a meteor." In fact, there was no miracle. Before the first publication appeared, the writer went through a long school of literary apprenticeship. So, Flaubert not only taught Maupassant the ability to write, he had a significant influence on the formation of his aesthetic system. In the late 1870s, Maupassant began attending Zola’s circle in Medan (a circle of naturalist authors), sharing many of the positions of positivism and some of the ideas of naturalistic aesthetics. But he did not consider himself a student of Zola.

Of great importance to Maupassant was friendship with Turgenev . Turgenev’s influence affected, first of all, the depth of Maupassant’s psychological analysis and lyricism, and most importantly, his skill as a writer of short stories. Maupassant dedicates his first collections to Flaubert and Turgenev.

Maupassant attached great importance to the ability to use the "building material" of literature. He saw Flaubert’s advantage over Stendhal or Balzac in that Flaubert was more of an "artist" and constantly concerned about style. For each thought, it is necessary to find a unique and adequate way of expression, because the form of the work is not a “shell”, but its very essence. Following this lesson of Flaubert helped him to make the language of his works clear, transparent, very flexible and expressive.

Maupassant believed that the realism and naturalism of the late 19th century were magnificent and necessary stages in the development of literature, but it would continue to develop further, freeing itself from bias and conventions and becoming an ever richer, deeper and more faithful reflection of life. He saw literature as a great social force that uncovers the seeds of the future in the present and helps them grow.

All of Maupassant’s work is devoted to several main themes that unite the writer’s small and large prose. From 1881 to 1890, Maupassant published collections of short stories one after another. In 1881, the "House of Tellier" appears, in 1883 "Mademoiselle Fifi" and "Works of Bekass". 1884 was a very fruitful year for Maupassant, he published four collections of short stories: Miss Harriet, The Rondoli Sisters, Moonlight and Yvette. In 1885, the collection "Tales of the Day and Night" was published, which included the story " Necklace ", which brought the author even more popularity.

Three more collections of short stories appeared in 1886: Mister Parent, Little Roca, and Toine. From 1887 to 1890, four more collections appeared annually, respectively: "Khorla", "Mrs. Husson’s Rose Bush", "The Left Hand" and "Useless Beauty".

His stories, a genre in which Maupassant’s talent was revealed to the fullest, are sometimes called "little novels". Many of them are based on a polished dramatic composition that can depict one episode, but can span a lifetime. The plot is usually very simple, which corresponds to the laws of the development of this genre in the 19th century, when a complex event gives way to the depiction of a person with his thoughts and feelings.

Maupassant’s psychological mastery allows him to accurately and reliably depict the versatility and inconsistency of human nature, with its often unexpected, but essentially natural emotions and actions, to create a social background and pictures of nature, written with penetrating lyricism. The action in them is organically connected with philosophical reflections and lyrical digressions, the characters speak in a lively, colorful language.

"Necklace"

A woman borrows an expensive diamond necklace to wear to an important ball after her husband surprises her with a smart new dress. During the ball, the necklace disappears. The couple subsequently go into debt to afford a replacement. A decade later, the wife finds out that the necklace was a cheap imitation.

"Two friends"

The main characters are two men who meet each other after a long break. They spend the day drinking, reminiscing and going for random walks. This walk takes them into the no-man’s-land between the fighting forces of the French and Prussians. While fishing, they are captured by Prussian soldiers and interrogated by a brutal officer who demands the password needed for them to reach the place where they were discovered. They refuse, the officer orders their execution, and then sits down and happily eats the fish they have caught.

"Two Little Soldiers"

A bizarre love triangle with a completely unexpected twist at the end. Jean and Luc are best friends who one day meet a farm girl while walking. Over time, they become best friends, and everything goes well. Then Luke begins to leave mysteriously, and Jean finds out that he was secretly dating a girl, and when the three of them get back together, everything is not the same as before: he has become the third wheel. The ending may be ironic, perhaps tragic, perhaps even absurd, but it’s definitely something.

"He?"

This is one of many examples of Maupassant’s stories about the strange invisible visitor. Invisible, it definitely makes itself felt. The general theme takes on an interesting divergence in his particular story, whereby the manifestation occurs as a direct result of fear.

"Pierrot"

A rich woman has a dozen bulbs stolen from her village garden. She follows the advice of a neighboring farmer to buy a guard dog and decides to save money by buying a smaller dog. After learning about the dog tax that owners are subject to, she decides to get rid of the dog, and Piero ends up at the bottom of a chalk pit, which owners often use to get rid of the tax burden. Not wanting to pay someone, the woman does it herself, but she is so tormented by remorse about the fate of the dog that she returns and throws crumbs to Piero. Until a bigger dog shows up below and refuses to pay to feed the other dog.

"Madame Tellier’s Place"

Like Prussian soldiers and unseen visitors, many prostitutes are inhabited by Maupassant’s stories. Often regarded as a masterpiece of short fiction, the title character of this story is a brothel lady who is herself untainted by the services of the girls under her command.

Since she cannot trust prostitutes to live without her supervision, she is forced to take them with her on a trip to a small town to attend her niece’s first communion. It is in the church that Maupassant’s obsession with prostitutes and unseen forces clash, as religious madness seizes the prostitutes and they wail about the conditions of their existence. However, instead of abandoning this state, everyone immediately returns to work, but a new sense of sisterhood and mutual understanding arises, and the tension and drama that reigned before dissipate.

"Hand"

Not just another supernatural horror story about the disembodied hand, but a commentary on supernatural horror stories about the disembodied hand. In this case, the police officer tells the listeners about the strange events associated with a man who held a human hand attached to the wall with a chain, and was found killed with a finger in his mouth and without a hand.

The hand is later found on the man’s grave, and the finger is found to be missing. The policeman offers a reasonable explanation, which is dismissed by the listeners in favor of a supernatural possibility.

"Buatel"

"Boitel" is a short story about Antoine Boitel, who reminisces about his past, where he met a black woman (as she is called in the text) who worked in a cafe on the docks (Café des Colonies) and fell in love with her. He describes her as perfect, with French mannerisms, and also very intelligent.

After several meetings together, they want to get married, so Antoine and the "negress" go to his hometown to ask permission from his parents. However, his parents did not like this woman, although she was polite and helpful due to her black skin. Therefore, Antoine had to refuse to marry her.

List of characters

Madame Loiselle, "Necklace"

After her husband buys her an expensive new dress for an important ball, she follows his advice to borrow an expensive diamond necklace from a friend. After the party, the couple discover that the necklace is missing, and in order to replace it, they blow all their savings and get into long-term debt. After ten years of poverty, they learn that the lost necklace was a cheap imitation.

"Savage Mother"

The main character of this story is a French widow, left alone after her son went to war against Prussia. During his absence, she is forced to give shelter to four Prussian soldiers and subsequently learns that her son has been killed. Although she is eventually shot by another soldier, she dies in revenge, killing the soldiers in her house after setting it on fire.

"Khorla"

Khorla is the star of the horror story, but it’s more than that. The theme of the mysterious unknown visitor runs throughout Maupassant’s prose, and this theme is most physically manifest in the creature described in this story by the highly agitated narrator. Khorla is literally an invisible presence that originates not from outside, but from within.

"Mademoiselle Fifi"

One of the most ironic titles in the Maupassant canon includes a title character with a French female name who is actually a brutal Prussian officer. His story is one of sublime retribution, which results in him having his throat slit by a prostitute. Although "Fifi" is the main character, it is actually the story of his killer, a young Jewish girl named Rachel, and the Prussians’ attempt to find her shelter, which costs them the lives of two more people and is never successful.

Madman, Diary of a Madman

He tells his story in a diary, and he’s not just a psychopath. He was once a highly respected justice of the peace. His diary is ostensibly intended to be an intellectual analysis of why people kill, as well as a philosophical debate about the immorality of this act. His diary is read retroactively after his own death, found among official court documents.

Countess de Mascaret, Useless Beauty

A short story called "Useless Beauty" features one of the author’s strange characters. The Countess confesses to her husband, the Count, a terrible secret that she hid from him: one of the seven children they had together is not really his. He becomes obsessed with the idea of ​​finding out which of the children is not his, but the countess stubbornly and categorically refuses to divulge this information.

In the end, she reveals the truth that she lied primarily in order to be loved for herself, and not as a sire.

Antoine Boitel, "Boitel"

Antoine Boitel is the protagonist of the novel Boitel, who falls in love with a black woman (to use a rather outdated term in the text) who works in a cafe. He considers a black woman ideal for himself and therefore wants to marry her. They went to his hometown to get his parents’ consent, but were subsequently denied. Antoine didn’t want to go against his parents, so they didn’t get married. He married another woman, they had 14 children, but he was not happy. Therefore, he decided not to go against the wishes of his children and to support them in every possible way.

Negress, "Buatel"

The so-called Negress is a black woman who was found at the bottom of a merchant ship by a captain. She was then adopted by the owner of the Colonia Cafe, who later died and inherited the cafe. She later fell in love with Antoine Boitel and accepted his marriage proposal. Later, she went with Antoine to meet his parents, but was refused. Antoine could not go against the will of his parents, so they had to leave.

Mere and Pere Boitel, "Buitel"

Guy de Maupassant portrayed Boitel’s parents as narrow-minded and naive. They rejected the black woman because of her black skin and did not allow Antoine Boitel to marry her.

Topics

War

War is a very important topic for Maupassant. The writer himself was mobilized from the first year of the university, which he subsequently could not complete, and participated in the Franco-Prussian war. From this campaign he carried away an aversion to any war. The Prussian officers who appear in the "war" stories are invaders - narrow-minded, cruel, arrogant, disgusting in their arrogance.

The central themes of many of his military stories are the themes of heroism and patriotism, but he solves them outside the box. His characters do not know how to analyze their actions. The feelings that compel them to fight and even sacrifice their lives are most often born from innate ideas of duty and honor, insulted by the invaders, or from an instinctive desire to restore justice. Such are the stories "Boulle de Souif", "Two Friends", "Uncle Milon". Different sides of the war and different human characters are also reflected in the stories "Duel", "The Adventure of Walter Schnuffs", "Horror" and others.

Maupassant’s attitude to war is unequivocal: any war is unacceptable for him. The cruelty of the invaders breeds reciprocal cruelty, and this terrible vicious circle cannot be broken.

Everyday life

In the stories of Maupassant, the reader is also presented with peaceful France during the period of the Third Republic. Like many contemporaries, Maupassant treated his reality with disgust, sometimes bitter, ironic, because he saw in it the dominance of pure reason and selfish interest that destroys natural human feelings. Depicting the everyday life of the peasants, the writer shows how hard work and hopeless poverty distort human relations (the stories "The Devil", "Khorla").

Money

The theme of money is also developed in stories about bureaucracy. Maupassant knew this environment well, since he himself had been an official for many years. Sometimes his characters cause deep pity In the story "The Necklace", the wife of a petty official ruins her life in order to pay money for someone else’s necklace, which she lost, and only many years later finds out that it was fake. She wanted to look at the ball no worse than others, and for this she sacrificed both herself and her husband.

But more often people are driven by greed. The thirst for money leads to the loss of human qualities: for the sake of the inheritance, a woman decides to betray her husband (“Inheritance”); the husband, who learned after the death of his wife about her love affairs, is consoled when he realizes that the jewelry given to her by her lover is genuine and worth a considerable amount (“Jewels”); a poor woman maims her unborn children in the womb in order to sell these freaks later, but it’s no better than a socialite who, being pregnant, tightens herself into a corset to have fun at balls, and then sends the crippled child out of sight ("Mother- Savage"). The theme of money determines the plot of many of his other stories.

Writers and directors love his stories because they are cinematic. This means that they are easy to imagine when reading. Very often, reading de Maupassant’s stories is like reading a script, where the description of the action is limited to the essentials in order to visually expand it during filming. Consider the parsimony of this passage from the Diary of a Madman, which foreshadows his transformation into a killer of people, not caged birds:

“And then I did what real killers do. I washed the scissors, I washed my hands. I sprinkled water and carried the body, the corpse, into the garden to hide it. I buried it under a strawberry. He will never be found. Every day I will eat strawberries from this plant.”

All the information the reader needs to create the scene is already there. Then, with the final statement at the end, all the information needed to reflect the character’s state of mind is summed up in just one short sentence. This is the secret sauce of de Maupassant’s creativity and the secret of his popularity.

Although he can write long stories (as well as novels), his best works are condensed to the point of leaving the reader to fill in certain pieces of information. Sometimes this information depends on the imagination of the reader. In other cases, any additional detail will be completely superfluous. An excerpt from a short story commonly known as "The Jewels" that describes what might be called a major turning point in the plot is a striking example of the author’s desire to make things easier for readers:

“One evening, in winter, she was at the opera and returned home, cold through and through. The next morning she coughed, and eight days later she died of pneumonia.”

Simplicity, the reduction of the plot to the main point and the rejection of information overload - this is what makes de Maupassant more suitable for the short form of fiction than for the novel. To describe the death of one of the story’s two main characters so briefly in a novel would be like cheating. The length and volume of the novel not only allows the author to insert what is not directly necessary, but almost requires it. Who wants to pay extra money for a massive novel just to get two character death sentences. Where are the details? Where is the return on emotional investment? This difference is one aspect of the short story that appeals to certain writers and certain readers. The logic of length leads to the fact that there is simply not enough time to get so emotionally immersed in the characters that two sentences describing their death,

It is this habit of getting to the bottom of it, leaving out certain information and trusting the reader to connect some necessary dots, that has attracted hundreds of filmmakers to his stories. It is much easier to include something in a film adaptation and please the reader than it is to take something out and please the reader. Guy de Maupassant died just two years after William Dickson invented the motion picture camera (and not even two years after Thomas Edison took credit for its invention), but reading his stories gives the impression that he knew what was coming next. De Maupassant, who wrote for a century that was infamous for stuffing stories with florid language and redundant detail, can today be recognized as a writer of short stories far ahead of his time.