“I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a
thunderbolt.” These words of Maupassant to Jose Maria de Heredia on the
occasion of a memorable meeting are, in spite of their morbid solemnity,
not an inexact summing up of the brief career during which, for ten
years, the writer, by turns undaunted and sorrowful, with the fertility
of a master hand produced poetry, novels, romances and travels, only to
sink prematurely into the abyss of madness and death.....
In the month of April, 1880, an article appeared in the “Le Gaulois”
announcing the publication of the Soirees de Medan. It was signed by
a name as yet unknown: Guy de Maupassant. After a juvenile diatribe
against romanticism and a passionate attack on languorous literature,
the writer extolled the study of real life, and announced the
publication of the new work. It was picturesque and charming. In the
quiet of evening, on an island, in the Seine, beneath poplars instead
of the Neapolitan cypresses dear to the friends of Boccaccio, amid
the continuous murmur of the valley, and no longer to the sound of the
Pyrennean streams that murmured a faint accompaniment to the tales
of Marguerite's cavaliers, the master and his disciples took turns in
narrating some striking or pathetic episode of the war. And the issue,
in collaboration, of these tales in one volume, in which the master
jostled elbows with his pupils, took on the appearance of a manifesto,
the tone of a challenge, or the utterance of a creed.
In fact, however, the beginnings had been much more simple, and they
had confined themselves, beneath the trees of Medan, to deciding on a
general title for the work. Zola had contributed the manuscript of the
“Attaque du Moulin,” and it was at Maupassant's house that the five
young men gave in their contributions. Each one read his story,
Maupassant being the last. When he had finished Boule de Suif, with
a spontaneous impulse, with an emotion they never forgot, filled with
enthusiasm at this revelation, they all rose and, without superfluous
words, acclaimed him as a master.
He undertook to write the article for the Gaulois and, in cooperation
with his friends, he worded it in the terms with which we are familiar,
amplifying and embellishing it, yielding to an inborn taste for
mystification which his youth rendered excusable. The essential point,
he said, is to “unmoor” criticism.
It was unmoored. The following day Wolff wrote a polemical dissertation
in the Figaro and carried away his colleagues. The volume was a
brilliant success, thanks to Boule de Suif. Despite the novelty, the
honesty of effort, on the part of all, no mention was made of the other
stories. Relegated to the second rank, they passed without notice. From
his first battle, Maupassant was master of the field in literature.
At once the entire press took him up and said what was appropriate
regarding the budding celebrity. Biographers and reporters sought
information concerning his life. As it was very simple and perfectly
straightforward, they resorted to invention. And thus it is that at the
present day Maupassant appears to us like one of those ancient heroes
whose origin and death are veiled in mystery.
I will not dwell on Guy de Maupassant's younger days. His relatives, his
old friends, he himself, here and there in his works, have furnished us
in their letters enough valuable revelations and touching remembrances
of the years preceding his literary debut. His worthy biographer,
H. Edouard Maynial, after collecting intelligently all the writings,
condensing and comparing them, has been able to give us some definite
information regarding that early period.
I will simply recall that he was born on the 5th of August, 1850, near
Dieppe, in the castle of Miromesnil which he describes in Une Vie....
Maupassant, like Flaubert, was a Norman, through his mother, and through
his place of birth he belonged to that strange and adventurous race,
whose heroic and long voyages on tramp trading ships he liked to
recall. And just as the author of “Education sentimentale” seems to have
inherited in the paternal line the shrewd realism of Champagne, so de
Maupassant appears to have inherited from his Lorraine ancestors their
indestructible discipline and cold lucidity.
His childhood was passed at Etretat, his beautiful childhood; it
was there that his instincts were awakened in the unfoldment of his
prehistoric soul. Years went by in an ecstasy of physical happiness. The
delight of running at full speed through fields of gorse, the charm
of voyages of discovery in hollows and ravines, games beneath the dark
hedges, a passion for going to sea with the fishermen and, on nights
when there was no moon, for dreaming on their boats of imaginary
voyages.
Mme. de Maupassant, who had guided her son's early reading, and had
gazed with him at the sublime spectacle of nature, put, off as long as
possible the hour of separation. One day, however, she had to take the
child to the little seminary at Yvetot. Later, he became a student
at the college at Rouen, and became a literary correspondent of Louis
Bouilhet. It was at the latter's house on those Sundays in winter when
the Norman rain drowned the sound of the bells and dashed against the
window panes that the school boy learned to write poetry.
Vacation took the rhetorician back to the north of Normandy. Now it was
shooting at Saint Julien l'Hospitalier, across fields, bogs, and through
the woods. From that time on he sealed his pact with the earth, and
those “deep and delicate roots” which attached him to his native soil
began to grow. It was of Normandy, broad, fresh and virile, that he
would presently demand his inspiration, fervent and eager as a boy's
love; it was in her that he would take refuge when, weary of life, he
would implore a truce, or when he simply wished to work and revive his
energies in old-time joys. It was at this time that was born in him that
voluptuous love of the sea, which in later days could alone withdraw him
from the world, calm him, console him.
In 1870 he lived in the country, then he came to Paris to live; for,
the family fortunes having dwindled, he had to look for a position. For
several years he was a clerk in the Ministry of Marine, where he turned
over musty papers, in the uninteresting company of the clerks of the
admiralty.
Then he went into the department of Public Instruction, where
bureaucratic servility is less intolerable. The daily duties are
certainly scarcely more onerous and he had as chiefs, or colleagues,
Xavier Charmes and Leon Dierx, Henry Roujon and Rene Billotte, but his
office looked out on a beautiful melancholy garden with immense plane
trees around which black circles of crows gathered in winter.
Maupassant made two divisions of his spare hours, one for boating, and
the other for literature. Every evening in spring, every free day,
he ran down to the river whose mysterious current veiled in fog or
sparkling in the sun called to him and bewitched him. In the islands in
the Seine between Chatou and Port-Marly, on the banks of Sartrouville
and Triel he was long noted among the population of boatmen, who
have now vanished, for his unwearying biceps, his cynical gaiety of
good-fellowship, his unfailing practical jokes, his broad witticisms.
Sometimes he would row with frantic speed, free and joyous, through the
glowing sunlight on the stream; sometimes, he would wander along the
coast, questioning the sailors, chatting with the ravageurs, or junk
gatherers, or stretched at full length amid the irises and tansy he
would lie for hours watching the frail insects that play on the surface
of the stream, water spiders, or white butterflies, dragon flies,
chasing each other amid the willow leaves, or frogs asleep on the
lily-pads.
The rest of his life was taken up by his work. Without ever becoming
despondent, silent and persistent, he accumulated manuscripts, poetry,
criticisms, plays, romances and novels. Every week he docilely submitted
his work to the great Flaubert, the childhood friend of his mother and
his uncle Alfred Le Poittevin. The master had consented to assist
the young man, to reveal to him the secrets that make chefs-d'oeuvre
immortal. It was he who compelled him to make copious research and to
use direct observation and who inculcated in him a horror of vulgarity
and a contempt for facility.
Maupassant himself tells us of those severe initiations in the Rue
Murillo, or in the tent at Croisset; he has recalled the implacable
didactics of his old master, his tender brutality, the paternal advice
of his generous and candid heart. For seven years Flaubert slashed,
pulverized, the awkward attempts of his pupil whose success remained
uncertain.
Suddenly, in a flight of spontaneous perfection, he wrote Boule de Suif.
His master's joy was great and overwhelming. He died two months later.
Until the end Maupassant remained illuminated by the reflection of the
good, vanished giant, by that touching reflection that comes from the
dead to those souls they have so profoundly stirred. The worship of
Flaubert was a religion from which nothing could distract him, neither
work, nor glory, nor slow moving waves, nor balmy nights.
At the end of his short life, while his mind was still clear: he wrote
to a friend: “I am always thinking of my poor Flaubert, and I say to
myself that I should like to die if I were sure that anyone would think
of me in the same manner.”
During these long years of his novitiate Maupassant had entered the
social literary circles. He would remain silent, preoccupied; and if
anyone, astonished at his silence, asked him about his plans he answered
simply: “I am learning my trade.” However, under the pseudonym of Guy de
Valmont, he had sent some articles to the newspapers, and, later,
with the approval and by the advice of Flaubert, he published, in the
“Republique des Lettres,” poems signed by his name.
These poems, overflowing with sensuality, where the hymn to the Earth
describes the transports of physical possession, where the impatience
of love expresses itself in loud melancholy appeals like the calls of
animals in the spring nights, are valuable chiefly inasmuch as they
reveal the creature of instinct, the fawn escaped from his native
forests, that Maupassant was in his early youth. But they add nothing
to his glory. They are the “rhymes of a prose writer” as Jules Lemaitre
said. To mould the expression of his thought according to the strictest
laws, and to “narrow it down” to some extent, such was his aim.
Following the example of one of his comrades of Medan, being readily
carried away by precision of style and the rhythm of sentences, by
the imperious rule of the ballad, of the pantoum or the chant royal,
Maupassant also desired to write in metrical lines. However, he never
liked this collection that he often regretted having published. His
encounters with prosody had left him with that monotonous weariness that
the horseman and the fencer feel after a period in the riding school, or
a bout with the foils.
Such, in very broad lines, is the story of Maupassant's literary
apprenticeship.
The day following the publication of “Boule de Suif,” his reputation
began to grow rapidly. The quality of his story was unrivalled, but at
the same time it must be acknowledged that there were some who, for the
sake of discussion, desired to place a young reputation in opposition to
the triumphant brutality of Zola.
From this time on, Maupassant, at the solicitation of the entire press,
set to work and wrote story after story. His talent, free from all
influences, his individuality, are not disputed for a moment. With a
quick step, steady and alert, he advanced to fame, a fame of which he
himself was not aware, but which was so universal, that no contemporary
author during his life ever experienced the same. The “meteor” sent out
its light and its rays were prolonged without limit, in article after
article, volume on volume.
He was now rich and famous.... He is esteemed all the more as they
believe him to be rich and happy. But they do not know that this young
fellow with the sunburnt face, thick neck and salient muscles whom they
invariably compare to a young bull at liberty, and whose love affairs
they whisper, is ill, very ill. At the very moment that success came to
him, the malady that never afterwards left him came also, and, seated
motionless at his side, gazed at him with its threatening countenance.
He suffered from terrible headaches, followed by nights of insomnia. He
had nervous attacks, which he soothed with narcotics and anesthetics,
which he used freely. His sight, which had troubled him at intervals,
became affected, and a celebrated oculist spoke of abnormality,
asymmetry of the pupils. The famous young man trembled in secret and was
haunted by all kinds of terrors.
The reader is charmed at the saneness of this revived art and yet, here
and there, he is surprised to discover, amid descriptions of nature
that are full of humanity, disquieting flights towards the supernatural,
distressing conjurations, veiled at first, of the most commonplace, the
most vertiginous shuddering fits of fear, as old as the world and as
eternal as the unknown. But, instead of being alarmed, he thinks that
the author must be gifted with infallible intuition to follow out thus
the taints in his characters, even through their most dangerous mazes.
The reader does not know that these hallucinations which he describes so
minutely were experienced by Maupassant himself; he does not know that
the fear is in himself, the anguish of fear “which is not caused by
the presence of danger, or of inevitable death, but by certain abnormal
conditions, by certain mysterious influences in presence of vague
dangers,” the “fear of fear, the dread of that horrible sensation of
incomprehensible terror.”
How can one explain these physical sufferings and this morbid distress
that were known for some time to his intimates alone? Alas! the
explanation is only too simple. All his life, consciously or
unconsciously, Maupassant fought this malady, hidden as yet, which was
latent in him.
As his malady began to take a more definite form, he turned his steps
towards the south, only visiting Paris to see his physicians and
publishers. In the old port of Antibes beyond the causeway of Cannes,
his yacht, Bel Ami, which he cherished as a brother, lay at anchor and
awaited him. He took it to the white cities of the Genoese Gulf, towards
the palm trees of Hyeres, or the red bay trees of Antheor.
After several tragic weeks in which, from instinct, he made a
desperate fight, on the 1st of January, 1892, he felt he was hopelessly
vanquished, and in a moment of supreme clearness of intellect, like
Gerard de Nerval, he attempted suicide. Less fortunate than the author
of Sylvia, he was unsuccessful. But his mind, henceforth “indifferent to
all unhappiness,” had entered into eternal darkness.
He was taken back to Paris and placed in Dr. Meuriot's sanatorium,
where, after eighteen months of mechanical existence, the “meteor”
quietly passed away.