The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de Maupassant

It was, I think, in 1881 that Turgénev while visiting me took out of his portmanteau a small French book entitled La Maison Tellier, and gave it to me.

“Read it some time,” said he in an off-hand way just as, a year before, he had given me a number of Russian Wealth that contained an article by Garshin, who was then only beginning to write. Evidently on this occasion, as in Garshin’s case, he was afraid of influencing me one way or the other and wished to know my own unbiassed opinion.

“It is by a young French writer,” said he. “Have a look at it. It isn’t bad. He knows you and appreciates you highly,” he added as if wishing to propitiate me. “As a man he reminds me of Druzhinin. He is, like Druzhmin, an excellent son, an admirable friend, un homme d’un commerce sûr, and, besides that, he associates with the working people, guides them, and helps them. Even in his relations with women he reminds me of Druzhinin.” And Turgénev told me something astonishing, incredible, of Maupassant’s conduct in that respect.

That time (1881) was for me a period of most ardent inner reconstruction of my whole outlook on life, and in this reconstruction the activity called the fine arts, to which I had formerly devoted all my powers, had not only lost the importance I formerly attributed to it, but had become simply obnoxious to me on account of the unnatural position it had hitherto occupied in my life, as it does generally in the estimation of the people of the well-to-do classes.

And therefore such works as the one Turgénev was recommending to me did not then interest me in the least. But to please him I read the book he had handed me.

From the first story, La Maison Tellier, despite the indecency and insignificance of the subject of the story, I could not help recognizing that the author had what is called talent.

He possessed that particular gift called talent, which consists in the capacity to direct intense concentrated attention according to the author’s tastes on this or that subject, in consequence of which the man endowed with this capacity sees in the things to which he directs his attention some new aspect which others have overlooked; and this gift of seeing what others have not seen Maupassant evidently possessed. But judging by the little volume I read, he unfortunately lacked the chief of the three conditions, besides talent, essential to a true work of art. These are: (1) a correct, that is, a moral relation of the author to his subject; (2) clearness of expression, or beauty of form, — the two are identical; and (3) sincerity, that is, a sincere feeling of love or hatred of what the artist depicts. Of these three, Maupassant possessed only the two last and was quite lacking in the first. He had not a correct, that is a moral, relation to the subjects depicted.

Judging by what I read I was convinced that Maupassant possessed talent, that is to say, the gift of attention revealing in the objects and facts of life with which he deals qualities others have not perceived. He was also master of a beautiful style, expressing what he wanted to say clearly, simply, and with charm. He was also master of that condition of true artistic production without which a work of art does not produce its effect, namely, sincerity; that is, he did not pretend that he loved or hated, but really loved or hated what he described. But unfortunately lacking the first and perhaps the chief condition of worthy artistic production, a correct moral relation to what he described — that is to say, a knowledge of the difference between good and evil — he loved and described things that should not have been loved and described. Thus, in this little volume, the author described with great detail and fondness how women seduce men, and men women; and in La femme de Paul he even describes certain obscenities difficult to understand. And he presents the country labouring folk not merely with indifference but even with contempt, as though they were animals.

This unconsciousness of the difference between good and evil is particularly striking in the story, Une partie de campagne, in which is given, as a very pleasant and amusing joke, a detailed description of how two men rowing with bare arms in a boat tempt and afterwards seduce at the same time, one of them an elderly mother and the other a young girl, her daughter.

The sympathy of the author is evidently all the time so much on the side of these two wretches that he not merely ignores, but simply does not see, what must have been felt by the seduced mother and the maid (her daughter), by the father, and by a young man who is evidently engaged to the daughter; and therefore, not merely is an objectionable description of a revolting crime presented in the form of an amusing jest, but the occurrence itself is described falsely, for what is given is only one side, and that the most insignificant — namely, the pleasure received by the rascals.

In that same little volume there is a story, Histoire d’une fille de ferme, which Turgénev particularly recommended to me and which particularly displeased me, again by this incorrect relation of the author to his subject. He evidently sees in all the working folk he describes mere animals, who rise to nothing more than sexual and maternal love, so that his descriptions give one an incomplete and artificial impression.

Lack of understanding of the life and interests of working people and the presentation of them as semi-brutes moved only by sensuality, spite, and greed, is one of the chief and most important defects of most recent French writers, including Maupassant, who not only in this but in all his other stories where he refers to the people, always describes them as coarse, dull animals at whom one can only laugh. Of course the French writers should know the nature of their own people better than I do; but despite the fact that I am

Скачать книгу