Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories | Page 7

all studied rhetorical
effect and all literary verbosity.
For applause and fame Maupassant cared nothing, and his proud
contempt for Orders and Academies is well known.
In a letter to Marie Bashkirtseff he writes as follows:
"Everything in life is almost alike to me, men, women, events. This is
my true confession of faith, and I may add what you may not believe,
which is that I do not care any more for myself than I do for the rest.
All is divided into ennui, comedy and misery. I am indifferent to
everything. I pass two-thirds of my time in being terribly bored. I pass
the third portion in writing sentences which I sell as dear as I can,
regretting that I have to ply this abominable trade."
And in a later letter:
"I have no taste that I cannot get rid of at my pleasure, not a desire that
I do not scoff at, not a hope that does not make me smile or laugh. I ask
myself why I stir, why I go hither or thither, why I give myself the
odious trouble of earning money, since it does not amuse me to spend
it."
And again:
"As for me, I am incapable of really loving my art. I am too critical, I
analyze it too much. I feel strongly how relative is the value of ideas,

words, and even of the loftiest intelligences. I cannot help despising
thought, it is so weak; and form, it is so imperfect. I really have, in an
acute, incurable form, the sense of human impotence, and of effort
which results in wretched approximations."
For nature, Maupassant had an ardent passion.... His whole being
quivered when she bathed his forehead with her light ocean breeze. She,
alone, knew how to rock and soothe him with her waves.
Never satisfied, he wished to see her under all aspects, and travelled
incessantly, first in his native province, amid the meadows and waters
of Normandy, then on the banks of the Seine along which he coasted,
bending to the oar. Then Brittany with its beaches, where high waves
rolled in beneath low and dreary skies, then Auvergne, with its
scattered huts amid the sour grass, beneath rocks of basalt; and, finally,
Corsica, Italy, Sicily, not with artistic enthusiasm, but simply to enjoy
the delight of grand, pure outlines. Africa, the country of Salammbô,
the desert, finally call him, and he breathes those distant odors borne on
the slow winds; the sunlight inundates his body, "laves the dark corners
of his soul." And he retains a troubled memory of the evenings in those
warm climes, where the fragrance of plants and trees seems to take the
place of air.
Maupassant's philosophy is as little complicated as his vision of
humanity. His pessimism exceeds in its simplicity and depth that of all
other realistic writers.
Still there are contradictions and not unimportant ones in him. The
most striking is certainly his fear of Death. He sees it everywhere, it
haunts him. He sees it on the horizon of landscapes, and it crosses his
path on lonely roads. When it is not hovering over his head, it is
circling round him as around Gustave Moreau's pale youth.... Can he,
the determined materialist, really fear the stupor of eternal sleep, or the
dispersion of the transient individuality? ...
Another contradiction. He who says that contact with the crowd
"tortures his nerves," and who professes such contempt for mankind,
yet considers solitude as one of the bitterest torments of existence. And

he bewails the fact that he cannot live just for himself, "keep within
himself that secret place of the ego, where none can enter."
"Alas!" said his master, "we are all in a desert." Nobody understands
anyone else and "whatever we attempt, whatever be the impulse of our
heart and the appeal of our lips, we shall always be alone!"
In this gehenna of death, in these nostalgias of the past, in these trances
of eternal isolation, may we not find some relinquishing of his
philosophy? Certainly not, for these contradictions accentuate all the
more the pain of existence and become a new source of suffering.
In any case, Maupassant's pessimism becomes logical in terminating in
pity, like that of Schopenhauer. I know that I am running foul of certain
admirers of the author who do not see any pity in his work, and it is
understood that he is pitiless. But examine his stories more closely and
you will find it revealed in every page, provided you go to the very
bottom of the subject. That is where it exists naturally, almost against
the desire of the writer, who does not arouse pity, nor teach it.
And, again, if it remains concealed from so many readers, it is because
it