The first aim of art, no doubt, is the representation of things as they
are. But then things are as our eyes see them and as our minds make
them; and it is thus of primary importance for the critic to distinguish
the precise qualities of the eyes and minds which make the world into
imaginative literature. Reality may be so definite and so false, just as
it may be so fantastic and so true; and, among work which we can
apprehend as dealing justly with reality, there may be quite as much
difference in all that constitutes outward form and likeness as there is
between a Dutch interior by Peter van der Hooch, the portrait of a king
by Velasquez, and the image of a woman smiling by Leonardo da Vinci. The
soul, for instance, is at heart as real as the body; but, as we can hear
it only through the body speaking, and see it only through bodily eyes,
and measure it, often enough, only in the insignificant moment of its
action, it may come to seem to us, at all events less realizable; and
thus it is that we speak of those who have vividly painted exterior
things as realists. Properly speaking, Maupassant is no more a realist
than Maeterlinck. He paints a kind of reality which it is easier for us
to recognize; that is all.
Every artist has his own vision of the world. Maupassant's vision was of
solid superficies, of texture which his hands could touch, of actions
which his mind could comprehend from the mere sight of its incidents.
He saw the world as the Dutch painters saw it, and he was as great a
master of form, of rich and sober color, of the imitation of the outward
gestures of life, and of the fashion of external things. He had the same
view of humanity, and shows us, with the same indifference, the same
violent ferment of life--the life of full-blooded people who have to
elbow their way through the world. His sense of desire, of greed, of all
the baser passions, was profound: he had the terrible logic of
animalism. Love-making, drunkenness, cheating, quarreling, the mere
idleness of sitting drowsily in a chair, the gross life of the farmyard
and the fields, civic dissensions, the sordid provincial dance of the
seven deadly sins, he saw in the same direct, unilluminating way as the
Dutch painters; finding, indeed, no beauty in any of these things, but
getting his beauty in the deft arrangement of them, in the mere act of
placing them in a picture. The world existed for him as something
formless which could be cut up into little pictures. He saw no farther
than the lines of his frame. The interest of the thing began inside that
frame, and what remained outside was merely material.
A story of Maupassant, more than almost anything in the world, gives you
the impression of manual dexterity. It is adequately thought out, but it
does not impress you by its thought; it is clearly seen, but it does not
impress you specially by the fidelity of its detail; it has just enough
of ordinary human feeling for the limits it has imposed on itself. What
impresses you is the extreme ingenuity of its handling; the way in which
this juggler keeps his billiard-balls harmoniously rising and falling in
the air. Often, indeed, you cannot help noticing the conscious smile
which precedes the trick, and the confident bow which concludes it. He
does not let you into the secret of the trick, but he prevents you from
ignoring that it is after all, only a trick which you have been
watching.
There is a philosophy of one kind or another behind the work of every
artist. Maupassant's was a simple one, sufficient for his needs as he
understood them, though perhaps really consequent upon his artistic
methods, rather than at the root of them. It was the philosophy of
cynicism: the most effectual means of limiting one's outlook, of
concentrating all one's energies on the task in hand. Maupassant wrote
for men of the world, and men of the world are content with the wisdom
of their counting-houses. The man of the world is perfectly willing to
admit that he is no better than you, because he takes it for granted
that you will admit yourself to be no better than he. It is a way of
avoiding comparison. To Maupassant this cynical point of view was
invaluable for his purpose. He wanted to tell stories just for the
pleasure of telling them; he wanted to concern himself with his story
simply as a story; incidents interested him, not ideas, nor even
characters, and he wanted every incident to be immediately effective.
Now cynicism, in France, supplies a sufficient basis for all these
requirements; it is the equivalent, for popular purposes, of that appeal
to the average which in England is sentimentality. Compare, for
instance, the admirable story "Boule de Suif," perhaps the best story
which Maupassant ever wrote, with a story of somewhat similar
motive--Bret Harte's "Outcasts of Poker Flat." Both stories are
pathetic; but the pathos of the American (who had formed himself upon
Dickens, and in the English tradition) becomes sentimental, and gets its
success by being sentimental; while the pathos of the Frenchman (who has
formed himself on Flaubert, and on French lines) gets its success
precisely by being cynical.
And then the particular variety of Maupassant's cynicism was just that
variation of the artistic idea upon the temperament which puts the best
finish upon work necessarily so limited, obliged to be so clenching, as
the short story. Flaubert's gigantic dissatisfaction with life, his
really philosophic sense of its vanity, would have overweighted a writer
so thoroughly equipped for his work as the writer of "Boule de Suif" and
"La Maison Tellier." Maupassant had no time, he allowed himself no
space, to reason about life; the need was upon him to tell story after
story, each with its crisis, its thrill, its summing up of a single
existence or a single action. The sharp, telling thrust that his
conception of art demanded could be given only by a very specious, not
very profound, very forthright, kind of cynicism, like the half kindly,
half contemptuous laugh of the man who tells a good story at the club.
For him it was the point of the epigram.
Maupassant was the man of his period, and his period was that of
Naturalism. In "Les Soirees de Medan," the volume in which "Boule de
Suif" appeared, there is another story called "Sac au Dos," in which
another novelist made his appearance among the five who "publicly
affirmed their literary tendencies" about the central figure of Zola. J.
K. Huysmans, then but at the outset of his slow and painful course
through schools and experiments, was in time to sum up the new
tendencies of a new period, as significantly as Maupassant summed up in
his short and brilliant, and almost undeviating career, the tendencies
of that period in which Taine and science seemed to have at last found
out the physical basis of life. Now it is a new realism which appeals to
us: it is the turn of the soul. The battle which the "Soirees de Medan"
helped to win has been won; having gained our right to deal with humble
and unpleasant and sordidly tragic things in fiction, we are free to
concern ourselves with other things. But though the period has passed,
and will not return, the masterpieces of the period remain. Among these
masterpieces are the novels and short stories of Guy de Maupassant.