The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de Maupassant
but, having exhausted his last strength in the struggle and not being able to make a last effort — perished without having attained freedom.
The tragedy of that ruin lies in what still afflicts the majority of the so-called cultured men of our time.
Men in general never have lived without an expression of the meaning of their life. Always and everywhere, highly-gifted men going in advance of others have appeared — the prophets, as they are called — who have explained to men the meaning and purport of their life; and always the ordinary, average men, who had not the strength to explain that meaning for themselves, have followed the explanation of life their prophets have disclosed to them.
That meaning was explained eighteen hundred years ago by Christianity, simply, clearly, indubitably, and joyfully, as is proved by the lives of all who acknowledge it and follow the guidance of life which results from that conception.
But then people appeared who misinterpreted that meaning so that it became meaningless, and men are placed in the dilemma either of acknowledging Christianity as interpreted by Orthodoxy, Lourdes, the Pope, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and so forth, or of going on with life according to the teachings of Renan and his kind, that is, living without any direction or understanding of life, following only their lusts as long as they are strong, and their habits when their lusts become feeble.
And people, ordinary people, choose the one or the other, sometimes both, first dissoluteness and then Orthodoxy; and thus whole generations live, shielding themselves with various theories, invented not to disclose the truth but to hide it. And ordinary, and more especially dull, people are content.
But there are others — not many, they are rare — such as Maupassant, who with their own eyes see things as they are, see their significance, see the contradictions in life concealed from others, and vividly realize to what these contradictions must inevitably lead them — and seek to solve them in advance. They seek these solutions everywhere except where they are to be found, namely in Christianity, because Christianity appears to them outlived and discarded, repelling them by its absurdity. And vainly trying to find these solutions for themselves, they come to the conviction that there are no solutions, and that it is inherent in life that one should always bear in oneself these unsolved contradictions. And having come to such a conclusion, if these people are feeble unenergetic natures, they put up with such meaningless life and are even proud of their position, accounting their ignorance a quality and a sign of culture. But if they are energetic, truthful, and gifted natures, such as Maupassant was, they do not endure this, but one way or other try to get out of this senseless life.
It is as if men thirsting in a desert sought water everywhere except near those people who, standing round a spring pollute it and offer stinking mire instead of the water that unceasingly flows beneath the mire. Maupassant was in this position; he could not believe — evidently it never even entered his head — that the truth he sought had long ago been found and was so near him; but neither could he believe that man can live in such contradiction as that in which he felt himself to be living.
Life, according to the theories in which he had been brought up, which surrounded him and were corroborated by all the lusts of his young, and mentally and physically strong, being — life consists in pleasure, of which the chief is to be found in woman with her love, and in the reproduction of this pleasure in its reflection, in the presentation of this love, and in exciting it in others. All this might be well; but on examining these pleasures quite other things emerge, alien and hostile to this love and this beauty: woman for some reason is disfigured, becomes unpleasantly pregnant and repulsive, gives birth to children, unwanted children; then come deceptions, cruelties, moral suffering, then mere old age, and ultimately death.
Then is this beauty indeed beauty? And why is all this so? It would be all very well if one could arrest life, but life goes on. And what does that mean? “Life goes on” means that the hair falls out, turns grey, the teeth decay, and there are wrinkles and offensive breath. Even before all is finished, everything becomes dreadful, repulsive: the rouge, the powder, the sweat, the smell, and the disgustingness, are evident. Where then is that which I serve? Where is beauty? But she is all! And if she is not, there is nothing left. There is no life!
But not merely is there no life in what seemed to be life: one begins to forsake it oneself, one becomes weaker, more stupid, one decays; others before one’s eyes seize those delights in which all the good of life lay. Nor is that all. Some other possibility of life begins to glimmer on one’s mind; something else, some other kind of union with men, with the whole world, one which does not admit of all these deceptions, something which cannot by any means be infringed; which is true and forever beautiful. But this cannot be. It is only the tantalizing vision of an oasis when we know that it does not exist and that there is nothing but sand everywhere.
Maupassant reached that tragic moment in life when the struggle begins between the falseness of the life about him and the truth of life of which he began to be conscious. Pangs of spiritual birth had already begun in him.
And it is these pangs of this birth that are expressed in his best work, especially in the short stories printed in this edition.
Had he not been fated to die while still suffering, but to fulfil all his possibilities, he would have left us great and illuminating works; but even what he gave us in the midst of his pain is much. Let us then be thankful to this strong and truthful man for what he has given us.
Novels:
French
A Life
French
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