Maupassant, Guy de

Maupassant, Guy de (gē də mōpäsäN`), 1850–93, French novelist and short-story writer, of an ancient Norman family. He worked in a government office at Paris and became known c.1880 as the most brilliant of the circle of Zola. He poured out a prodigious number of short stories, novels, plays, and travel sketches until 1891, when he went mad. He died in a sanitarium. Maupassant's style and treatment of subject resemble those of Flaubert in classic simplicity, clarity, and objective calm. Maupassant is a modern exemplar of traditional French psychological realism; he portrays his characters as unhappy victims of their greed, desire, or vanity but presents even the most sordid details of their lives without sermonizing. His best novels are considered to be Une Vie (1883, tr. A Life), about the disillusioning life of a lonely woman; Bel-Ami (1885), describing the career of a selfish journalist; Pierre et Jean (1888), a study of the hatred of two brothers; and Notre Cœur (1890, tr. Our Hearts), showing the emotional life of an unhappily married man. His short stories, 300 in all, are superior to the rest of his work, and many of them are said to be unsurpassed in their genre. A list of his masterpieces would include "Boule de suif" ("Tallow Ball"), "L'Héritage" ("The Heritage"), "La Parure" ("The Necklace"), "La Maison Tellier" ("The House of Mme Tellier"), "Clair de lune" ("Moonlight"), "La Ficelle" ("The Piece of String"), "Mlle Fifi," and "Miss Harriet." Maupassant had tremendous influence on all European literature, and his works are often translated.

Bibliography

See studies by E. D. Sullivan (1954, repr. 1971); A. H. Wallace (1973), and S. Jackson (1938, repr. 1974).

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Maupassant, (Henry-René-Albert-) Guy de

Guy de Maupassant, photograph by Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon), c. 1885.

(credit: Archives Photographiques)

(born Aug. 5, 1850, Château de Miromesnil?, near Dieppe, France—died July 6, 1893, Paris) French writer of short stories. His law studies were interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War; his experience as a volunteer provided him with material for some of his best works. Later, as a civil-service employee, he became a protégé of Gustave Flaubert. He first gained attention with “Boule de Suif” (1880; “Ball of Fat”), probably his finest story. In the next 10 years he published some 300 short stories, six novels, and three travel books. Taken together, his stories present a broad, naturalistic picture of French life from 1870 to 1890. His subjects include war, the Norman peasantry, the bureaucracy, life on the banks of the Seine, the emotional problems of the different classes, and, ominously, hallucination. Maupassant was phenomenally promiscuous, and before he was 25 years old his health was being eroded by syphilis. He attempted suicide in 1892 and was committed to an asylum, where he died at age 42. He is generally considered France's greatest master of the short story.