Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant | Page 3

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A SELECTION from the WRITINGS of GUY DE MAUPASSANT

SHORT STORIES of the TRAGEDY AND COMEDY OF LIFE
WITH A CRITICAL PREFACE BY PAUL BOURGET of the French
Academy
AND AN INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT ARNOT, M.A.
VOL. I {of III ??}
TABLE OF CONTENTS.[*]
VOLUME I. 1. MADEMOISELLE FIFI 2. AN AFFAIR OF STATE 3.
THE ARTIST 4. THE HORLA 5. MISS HARRIET 6. THE HOLE 7.

LOVE 8. THE INN 9. A FAMILY 10. BELLFLOWER 11. WHO
KNOWS? 12. THE DEVIL 13. EPIPHANY 14. SIMON'S PAPA 15.
WAITER, A "BOCK" 16. THE SEQUEL TO A DIVORCE 17. THE
MAD WOMAN 18. IN VARIOUS ROLES 19. THE FALSE GEMS 20.
COUNTESS SATAN 21. THE COLONEL'S IDEAS 22. TWO
LITTLE SOLDIERS 23. GHOSTS 24. WAS IT A DREAM? 25. THE
DIARY OF A MADMAN 26. AN UNFORTUNATE LIKENESS 27.
A COUNTRY EXCURSION
[*] At the close of the last volume will be found a complete list of the
French Titles of De Maupassant's writings, with their English
equivalents.

GUY DE MAUPASSANT
Of the French writers of romance of the latter part of the nineteenth
century no one made a reputation as quickly as did Guy de Maupassant.
Not one has preserved that reputation with more ease, not only during
life, but in death. None so completely hides his personality in his glory.
In an epoch of the utmost publicity, in which the most insignificant
deeds of a celebrated man are spied, recorded, and commented on, the
author of "Boule de Suif," of "Pierre et Jean," of "Notre Coeur," found
a way of effacing his personality in his work.
Of De Maupassant we know that he was born in Normandy about 1850;
that he was the favorite pupil, if one may so express it, the literary
protege, of Gustave Flaubert; that he made his debut late in 1880, with
a novel inserted in a small collection, published by Emile Zola and his
young friends, under the title: "The Soirees of Medan"; that
subsequently he did not fail to publish stories and romances every year
up to 1891, when a disease of the brain struck him down in the fullness
of production; and that he died, finally, in 1893, without having
recovered his reason.
We know, too, that he passionately loved a strenuous physical life and
long journeys, particularly long journeys upon the sea. He owned a
little sailing yacht, named after one of his books, "Bel-Ami," in which
he used to sojourn for weeks and months. These meager details are
almost the only ones that have been gathered as food for the curiosity
of the public.
I leave the legendary side, which is always in evidence in the case of a

celebrated man,--that gossip, for example, which avers that Maupassant
was a high liver and a worldling. The very number of his volumes is a
protest to the contrary. One could not write so large a number of pages
in so small a number of years without the virtue of industry, a virtue
incompatible with habits of dissipation. This does not mean that the
writer of these great romances had no love for pleasure and had not
tasted the world, but that for him these were secondary things. The
psychology of his work ought, then, to find an interpretation other than
that afforded by wholly false or exaggerated anecdotes. I wish to
indicate here how this work, illumined by the three or four positive data
which I have given, appears to me to demand it.
And first, what does that anxiety to conceal his personality prove,
carried as it was to such an extreme degree? The answer rises
spontaneously in the minds of those who have studied closely the
history of literature. The absolute silence about himself, preserved by
one whose position among us was that of a Tourgenief, or of a
Merimee, and of a