Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant | Page 5

ending of the "Water's Edge" is less sinister than the murder and
the vision of horror which terminate the pantheistic hymn of the
"Rustic Venus." Considered as documents revealing the cast of mind of
him who composed them, these two lyrical essays are especially
significant, since they were spontaneous. They explain why De
Maupassant, in the early years of production, voluntarily chose, as the
heroes of his stories, creatures very near to primitive existence,
peasants, sailors, poachers, girls of the farm, and the source of the vigor
with which he describes these rude figures. The robustness of his
animalism permits him fully to imagine all the simple sensations of
these beings, while his pessimism, which tinges these sketches of brutal
customs with an element of delicate scorn, preserves him from
coarseness. It is this constant and involuntary antithesis which gives
unique value to those Norman scenes which have contributed so much
to his glory. It corresponds to, those two contradictory tendencies in
literary art, which seek always to render life in motion with the most
intense coloring, and still to make more and more subtle the impression
of this life. How is one ambition to be satisfied at the same time as the
other, since all gain in color and movement brings about a diminution
of sensibility, and conversely? The paradox of his constitution
permitted to Maupassant this seemingly impossible accord, aided as he
was by an intellect whose influence was all powerful upon his
development--the writer I mention above, Gustave Flaubert.
These meetings of a pupil and a master, both great, are indeed rare.

They present, in fact, some troublesome conditions, the first of which is
a profound analogy between two types of thought. There must have
been, besides, a reciprocity of affection, which does not often obtain
between a renowned senior who is growing old and an obscure junior,
whose renown is increasing. From generation to generation, envy
reascends no less than she redescends. For the honor of French men of
letters, let us add that this exceptional phenomenon has manifested
itself twice in the nineteenth century. Merimee, whom I have also
named, received from Stendhal, at twenty, the same benefits that
Maupassant received from Flaubert.
The author of "Une Vie" and the writer of "Clara Jozul" resemble each
other, besides, in a singular and analogous circumstance. Both achieved
renown at the first blow, and by a masterpiece which they were able to
equal but never surpass. Both were misanthropes early in life, and
practised to the end the ancient advice that the disciple of Beyle carried
upon his seal: --"Remember to distrust." And, at
the same time, both had delicate, tender hearts under this affectation of
cynicism, both were excellent sons, irreproachable friends, indulgent
masters, and both were idolized by their inferiors. Both were worldly,
yet still loved a wanderer's life; both joined to a constant taste for
luxury an irresistible desire for solitude. Both belonged to the extreme
left of the literature of their epoch, but kept themselves from excess and
used with a judgment marvelously sure the sounder principles of their
school. They knew how to remain lucid and classic, in taste as much as
in form--Merimee through all the audacity of a fancy most exotic, and
Maupassant in the realism of the most varied and exact observation. At
a little distance they appear to be two patterns, identical in certain traits,
of the same family of minds, and Tourgenief, who knew and loved the
one and the other, never failed to class them as brethren.
They are separated, however, by profound differences, which perhaps
belong less to their nature than to that of the masters from whom they
received their impulses: Stendhal, so alert, so mobile, after a youth
passed in war and a ripe age spent in vagabond journeys, rich in
experiences, immediate and personal; Flaubert so poor in direct
impressions, so paralyzed by his health, by his family, by his theories
even, and so rich in reflections, for the most part solitary.
Among the theories of the anatomist of "Madame Bovary," there are

two which appear without ceasing in his Correspondence, under one
form or another, and these are the ones which are most strongly evident
in the art of De Maupassant. We now see the consequences which were
inevitable by reason of them, endowed as Maupassant was with a
double power of feeling life bitterly, and at the same time with so much
of animal force. The first theory bears upon the choice of personages
and the story of the romance, the second upon the character of the style.
The son of a physician, and brought up in the rigors of scientific
method, Flaubert believed this method to be efficacious in art as in
science. For instance, in the writing of