Guy de Maupassant

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (/ˈmoʊpəˌsɑːnt/;[1] French: [ɡid(ə)

Guy de Maupassant
mopasɑ̃ ]; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a French writer, remembered as a
master of the short story form, and as a representative of the naturalist school of
writers, who depicted human lives and destinies and social forces in
disillusioned and often pessimistic terms.

Maupassant was a protégé of Gustave Flaubert and his stories are characterized
by economy of style and efficient, effortless dénouements (outcomes). Many are
set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s, describing the futility of war
and the innocent civilians who, caught up in events beyond their control, are
permanently changed by their experiences. He wrote some 300 short stories, six
novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse. His first published story,
"Boule de Suif" ("Ball of Suet", 1880), is often considered his masterpiece.

Contents
Born Henri René Albert Guy
Biography
de Maupassant
Significance
5 August 1850
Legacy Tourville-sur-Arques,
Bibliography France
Short stories Died 6 July 1893 (aged 42)
Novels
Passy, Paris, France
Short-story collections
Resting Montparnasse Cemetery
Travel writing
place
Poetry
Pen name Guy de Valmont, Joseph
References Prunier
External links Occupation Novelist, short story
writer, poet
Genre Naturalism, Realism
Biography
Henri-René-Albert-Guyde Maupassant was born 5 August 1850 at the Château Signature
de Miromesnil (Castle 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. His mother urged his father when they married in
1846 to obtain the right to use theparticule or form "de Maupassant" instead of "Maupassant" as his family name, in order to indicate
noble birth.[2] Gustave discovered a certain Jean-Baptiste Maupassant, conseiller-secrétaire to the King, who was ennobled in
1752.[2] He then obtained from the Tribunal Civil of Rouen by decree dated 9 July 1846 the right to style himself "de Maupassant"
[2]
instead of "Maupassant" and this was his surname at the birth of his son Guy in 1850.

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, who was violent towards her
.
 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.[3] She was an
exceptionally well-read woman and was very fond of classical literature, particularly
Shakespeare. Until the age of thirteen, Guy happily lived with his mother, 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, his mother next placed her two sons as day
boarders in a private school, the Institution Leroy-Petit, in Rouen—theInstitution Robineau of
Maupassant's story La Question du Latin—for classical studies.[4] From his early education he
retained a marked hostility to religion, and to judge from verses composed around this time he
deplored the ecclesiastical atmosphere, its ritual and discipline.[5] Finding the place to be
.[6]
unbearable, he finally got himself expelled in his next-to-last year

In 1867, as he entered junior high school, Maupassant made acquaintance with Gustave
Flaubert at Croisset at the insistence of his mother.[7] Next year, in autumn, he was sent to the
Guy de Maupassant 7 years
old Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen[8] where he proved a good scholar indulging in poetry and
taking a prominent part in theatricals. In October 1868, at the age of 18, he saved the famous
poet Algernon Charles Swinburnefrom drowning off the coast of Étretat.[9]

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 boating on theSeine 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. He wrote and played himself in a comedy in 1875 (with the benediction of Flaubert), "À la feuille de
rose, maison turque".

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 D
" eux 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.

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 (including Charles
Gounod, Alexandre Dumas, fils, and Charles Garnier) who did not care for the Eiffel
Tower.[10] 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.[11] 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 W
orks.

Maupassant also wrote under several pseudonyms such as Joseph Prunier, Guy de
Valmont, and Maufrigneuse (which he used from1881 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. It has been suggested that his brother, Hervé, also
suffered from syphilis and the disease may have been congenital.[12] On 2 January
1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat, and was committed Guy de Maupassant early in his
career.
to the private asylum of Esprit Blanche atPassy, in Paris, where he died 6 July 1893.

Maupassant penned his own epitaph: "I have coveted everything and taken pleasure
in nothing." He is buried in Section 26 of theMontparnasse Cemetery, Paris.

Significance
Maupassant is considered a father of the modern short story. He delighted in clever plotting, and served as a model for Somerset
Maugham and O. Henry in this respect. One of his famous short stories, "The Necklace", was imitated with a twist by both Maugham
("Mr Know-All", "A String of Beads") andHenry 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.[13]

Legacy
Leo Tolstoy used Maupassant as the subject for one of his essays on art: The Works of Guy de Maupassant. His stories are second
only to Shakespeare in their inspiration of movie adaptations with films ranging from Stagecoach, Citizen Kane, Oyuki the Virgin and
Masculine Feminine.[14]

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."

William Saroyan wrote a short story about Maupassant in his 1971 book, Letters from 74 rue Taitbout or Don't Go But If You Must
Say Hello To Everybody.

Isaac Babel wrote a short story about him, “Guy de Maupassant.” It appears in The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel and in the story
anthology You’ve Got To Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe.
Gene Roddenberry, in an early draft for The Questor Tapes, wrote a scene in which theandroid Questor employs Maupassant's theory
that, "the human female will open her mind to a man to whom she has opened other channels of communications." In the script
Questor copulates with a woman to obtain information that she is reluctant to impart. Due to complaints from NBC executives, this
part of the script was never filmed.[15]

Michel Drach directed and co-wrote a 1982 French biographical film: Guy de Maupassant. Claude Brasseur stars as the titular
character.

Bibliography

Short stories
A Country Excursion The Corsican Bandit
A Coup d'État The Cripple
A Coward A Crisis
A Cremation The Dead Girl (a.k.a. "Was it a Dream?")
Abandoned Dead Woman's Secret
The Accent The Deaf Mute
After Denis
Alexandre The Devil
All Over The Diamond Necklace
Allouma The Diary of a Madman
Ampanget Discovery
An Old Man The Dispenser of Holy Water
An Adventure in Paris The Donkey
An Artifice The Door
At Sea The Dowry
Babette Dreams
Bed 29 The Drowned Man
Belhomme's Beast The Drunkard
Bertha A Duel
Beside Schopenhauer's Corpse The Effeminates
Boitelle The Englishman of Etretat
Châli Epiphany
Coco The False Gems
The Accursed Bread A Family
The Adopted Son A Family Affair
The Apparition Farewell
The Artist The Farmer's Wife
The Baroness Father Matthew
The Beggar A Father's Confession
The Blind Man The Fishing Hole
"Boule de Suif" (Ball of Fat) Fascination
The Cake The Father
The Capture of Walter Schnaffs Father Milon
The Child Fear
The Christening Femme Fatale
Clair de Lune The First Snowfall
Cleopatra in Paris Florentine
Clochette Forbidden Fruit
A Cock Crowed Forgiveness
The Colonel's Ideas Found on a Drowned Man
The Confession Friend Joseph
Friend Patience A Meeting
The Frontier A Million (Un Million)
The Gamekeeper Minuet
A Ghost Misti
Ghosts Miss Harriet
The Grave The Model
The Graveyard Sisterhood Moiron
The Hairpin Monsieur Parent
The Hand Moonlight
Growing Old The Moribund
Happiness Mother and Son
Hautot Senior and Hautot Junior A Mother of Monsters
His Avenger "Mother Sauvage"
The Highway Man The Mountain Pool
"The Horla, or Modern Ghosts" The Mustache
The Horrible My Twenty-Five Days
The Hostelry My Uncle Jules
A Humble Drama My Uncle Sosthenes
The Impolite Sex My Wife
In the Country The Necklace
In the Spring A New Year's Gift
In the Wood The Night: A Nightmare
Indiscretion No Quarter (French Le père Milon)
The Inn A Normandy Joke
The Jewelry Old Amable
Julie Romaine Old Judas
The Kiss The Old Man
The Lancer's Wife Old Mongilet
Lasting Love On Horseback
Legend of Mont St. Michel On the River
The Legion of Honor On a Spring Evening
Lieutenant Lare's Marriage The Orphan
The Little Cask Our Friends The English
Little Louise Roque Our Letters
A Lively Friend A Parricide
The Log The Parrot
Looking Back A Passion
The Love of Long Ago The Patron
Madame Baptiste The Penguin's Rock
Madame Hermet "The Piece of String"
Madame Husson's Rosier "Pierrot"
Madame Parisse Pierre et Jean
Madame Tellier's Establishment The Port
Mademoiselle Cocotte A Portrait
"Mademoiselle Fifi" The Prisoners
Mademoiselle Pearl The Protector
The Maison Tellier Queen Hortense
The Magic Couch A Queer Night in Paris
Magnetism The Question of Latin
Mamma Stirling The Rabbit
The Man with the Pale Eyes A Recollection
The Marquis de Fumerol Regret
Marroca Revenge
Martine The Relic
The Mask The Reward
 Roger's Method Toine
Roly-Poly (Boule de Suif) Tombstones
The Rondoli Sisters Travelling
Rosalie Prudent A Tress of Hair
Rose The Trip of the Horla
Rust "Two Friends"
A Sale Two Little Soldiers
Saint Anthony The Umbrella
The Shepherd's Leap An Uncomfortable Bed
The Signal The Unknown
Simon's Papa "Useless Beauty"
The Snipe A Vagabond
The Son A Vendetta
Solitude The Venus of Branzia
The Story of a Farm Girl En Voyage
A Stroll Waiter, a "Bock"
The Spasm The Wardrobe
"Suicides" A Wedding Gift
Sundays of a Bourgeois Who Knows?
The Terror A Widow
The Test The Will
That Costly Ride The Wolf
That Pig of a Morin The Wooden Shoes
Theodule Sabot's Confession The Wreck
The Thief The Wrong House
Timbuctoo Yvette Samoris

Novels
Une Vie (1883)
Bel-Ami (1885)
Mont-Oriol (1887)
Pierre et Jean (1888)
Fort comme la mort (1889)
Notre Cœur (1890)
L’Angelus (1910)

Short-story collections
Les Soirées de Médan(with Zola, Huysmans et al. ContainsBoule de Suif by Maupassant) (1880)
La Maison Tellier (1881)
Mademoiselle Fifi (1883)
Contes de la Bécasse (1883)
Miss Harriet (1884)
Les Sœurs Rondoli (1884)
Clair de lune (1884) (contains "Les Bijoux")
Yvette (1884)
Contes du jour et de la nuit(1885) (contains "La Parure" or "The Necklace")
Monsieur Parent (1886)
La Petite Roque (1886)
Toine (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)[16] containing Nuit de Neige

References
1. "Maupassant" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/maupassant). Random House Webster's Unabridged
Dictionary.
2. Alain-Claude Gicquel, Maupassant, tel un météore, Le Castor Astral, 1993, p. 12
3. "Guy de Maupassant Biography"(http://www.enotes.com/topics/guy-de-maupassant). enotes. Retrieved 9 December
2014.
4. Maupassant, Choix de Contes, Cambridge, p. viii, 1945
5. de Maupassant, Guy (1984).Le Horla et autres contes d'angoisse(in French) (2006 ed.). Paris: Flammarion. p. 233.
ISBN 978-2-0807-1300-1.
6. "Biographie de Guy de Maupassant"(http://www.alalettre.com/maupassant-bio.php). @lalettre.com. Retrieved
9 December 2014.
7. "Maupassant's Apprenticeship with Flaubert"(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/369995/Guy-de-Maupassa
nt).
8. "Lycée Pierre Corneille de Rouen - History"(http://lgcorneille-lyc.spip.ac-rouen.fr/spip.php?article6)
. Lgcorneille-
lyc.spip.ac-rouen.fr. 19 April 1944. Retrieved 13 March 2018.
9. Clyde K. Hyder, Algernon Swinburne: The Critical Heritage, 1995, p. 185
10. "The Tower of Babel - Criticism of Eiffel Tower" (https://web.archive.org/web/20131013202211/http://mariogagliardi.c
om/index.php?%2Farchives%2F43-The-T ower-of-Babel-Gustave-Eiffel-and-the-creation-of-modernity.html). Archived
from the original (http://www.mariogagliardi.com/index.php?/archives/43-The-Tower-of-Babel-Gustave-Eiffel-and-the-
creation-of-modernity.html) on 13 October 2013.
11. Barthes, Roland. The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies. Tr. Howard, Richard. Berkeley:University of California
Press. ISBN 978-0-520-20982-4. Page 1.
12. "Remembering Maupassant | Arts and Entertainment | BBC W orld Service" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/h
ighlights/000808_maupassant.shtml). Bbc.co.uk. 9 August 2000. Retrieved 13 March 2018.
13. Pierre Bayard, Maupassant, juste avant Freud(Paris: Minuit, 1998)
14. Richard Brody (26 October 2015). "The Writer Who Sparks the Finest Movie Adaptations" (http://www.newyorker.co
m/culture/richard-brody/the-writer-who-sparks-the-finest-movie-adaptations)
. The New Yorker. Retrieved 31 October
2015.
15. [Quoted from the track "The Questor Affair" from the album Inside Star Trek.]
16. The Tales of Maupassant. New York: Heritage Press. 1964.

External links
Maupassantiana, a French scholar's website on Maupassant and his works
Works by Guy de Maupassantat Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Guy de Maupassantat Internet Archive
Works by Guy de Maupassantat LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
 Université McGill: le roman selon les romanciersRecensement et analyse des écrits non romanesques de Guy de
Maupassant
Works by Guy de Maupassantat Online Literature (HTML)
Works by Guy de Maupassant in Ebooks(in French)
Works by Guy de Maupassant(text, concordances and frequency list)
Petri Liukkonen. "Guy de Maupassant". Books and Writers
Oeuvres de Maupassant, à Athena(in French)

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