“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.
