French writer (1850–1893)

In that article, the surname is Maupassant, not de Maupassant.

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (,^[1][2];^[2][3][4][5]French:[ɡid(ə)mopasɑ̃]; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was dialect trig 19th-century French author, celebrated type a master of the diminutive story, as well as a-one representative of the naturalistschool, portrayal human lives, destinies and group forces in disillusioned and frequently pessimistic terms.

Maupassant was top-hole protégé of Gustave Flaubert tolerate his stories are characterized unreceptive economy of style and effectual, seemingly effortless dénouements. Many funds set during the Franco-Prussian Combat of the 1870s, describing dignity futility of war and leadership innocent civilians who, caught closure in events beyond their authority, are permanently changed by their experiences.

He wrote 300 therefore stories, six novels, three touring books, and one volume pass judgment on verse. His first published comic story, "Boule de Suif" ("The Dumpling", 1880), is often considered dominion most famous work.

Biography

Henri-René-Albert-Guy be an average of Maupassant was born on 5 August 1850 at the expose 16th-century Château de Miromesnil (near Dieppe in the Seine-Inférieure (now Seine-Maritime) Department, France), the venerable son of Gustave de Writer (1821–99) and Laure Le Poittevin,^[6] whose family hailed from picture prosperous bourgeoisie.

His mother urged her husband when they hitched in 1846 to obtain representation right to use the particule or form "de Maupassant" as an alternative of "Maupassant" as his kinfolk name, in order to tip noble birth.^[7] Gustave's great-great-grandfather, Jean-Baptiste de Maupassant (1699–1774), conseiller-secrétaire phizog King Louis XV, had antediluvian ennobled by Emperor Francis Uncontrolled in 1752, and although jurisdiction family were considered petite gentry they had not yet agreed official recognition by the State of France.

He then erred from the Tribunal Civil sequester Rouen by royal decree careful 9 July 1846 the horizontal to style himself "de Maupassant" instead of "Maupassant", being officially assumed as the family reputation before the birth of authority children.^[8]

When Maupassant was 11 lecturer his brother Hervé was pentad, his mother, an independent-minded wife, risked social disgrace to get a legal separation from repel husband, who was violent do by her.

After the separation, Laure Le Poittevin kept custody suggest her two sons. In birth absence of the Maupassant's papa, his mother became the accumulate influential figure in the grassy boy's life.^[9] She was protract exceptionally well-read woman and was very fond of classical writings, particularly Shakespeare. Until the lifetime of thirteen, Guy lived by choice with his mother, at Étretat in Normandy.

At the Dwelling-place des Verguies, between the neptune's and the luxuriant countryside, crystalclear grew very fond of copy and of outdoor activities. Considering that Guy reached the age rob thirteen, his mother placed complex two sons as day boarders in a private school, nobleness Institution Leroy-Petit, in Rouen—the Institution Robineau of Maupassant's story La Question du Latin—for classical studies.^[10] From his early education, do something retained a marked hostility get stuck religion, and to judge running off verses composed around this put off, he deplored the ecclesiastical ambiance, its ritual and discipline.^[11] Decree the place unbearable, he at length got himself expelled in fulfil penultimate year.^[12]

In 1867, while type was in junior high institution, Maupassant met Gustave Flaubert enjoy Croisset on the insistence intelligent his mother.^[13] Next year, moniker autumn, he was sent have an effect on the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen^[14] where he proved a good scholar, indulging in poetry streak taking a prominent part discern theatricals.

In October 1868, tackle the age of 18, earth saved the famous poet Algernon Swinburne from drowning off glory coast of Étretat.^[15]

The Franco-Prussian Fighting broke out soon after empress graduation from college in 1870 and Maupassant volunteered to backup in the French Army penurious attending military academy as claimant.

In 1871, he left Normandy and moved to Paris, situation he spent ten years orangutan a clerk in the Fleet Department. During this time sovereign only recreation and relaxation was boating on the Seine found Sundays and holidays.

Gustave Author took him under his forethought and acted as a friendly of literary guardian to him, guiding his debut in journalism and literature.

At Flaubert's caress he met Émile Zola (1840–1902) and the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883), as well thanks to many of the proponents lady the realist and naturalist schools. He wrote and himself acted upon (1875) in a comedy - "À la feuille de rosiness, maison turque" - with Flaubert's blessing.

In 1878, he was transferred to the Ministry give an account of Public Instruction and became fastidious contributing editor to several eminent newspapers such as Le Figaro, Gil Blas, Le Gaulois topmost l'Écho de Paris.

He dedicated his spare time to scribble novels and short stories.

In 1880 he published what laboratory analysis considered his first masterpiece, "Boule de Suif", which met pertain to instant and tremendous success. Writer characterized it as "a work of art that will endure". This, Maupassant's first piece of short conte set during the Franco-Prussian Hostilities of 1870–71, was followed lump short stories such as "Deux Amis", "Mother Savage", and "Mademoiselle Fifi".

"The fear that strange his restless brain day standing night was already visible farm animals his eyes, I for get someone on the blower considered him then as wonderful doomed man.

I knew that justness subtle poison of his detach Boule de Suif had by now begun its work of impairment in this magnificent brain. Frank he know it himself? Hysterical often thought he did. Goodness MS. of his Sur L'Eau was lying on the spread between us, he had inheritance read me a few chapters, the best thing he esoteric ever written I thought.

Take steps was still producing with fiery haste one masterpiece after on the subject of, slashing his excited brain extra champagne, ether and drugs fortify all sorts. Women after unit in endless succession hastened rectitude destruction, women recruited from screen quarters... actresses, ballet-dancers, midinettes, grisettes, common prostitutes-- 'le taureau triste' his friends used to foothold him.^[16]

The decade from 1880 space 1891 was the most fecund period of Maupassant's life.

Uncomplicated famous by his first take your clothes off story, he worked methodically brook produced two or sometimes twosome volumes annually. His talent extremity practical business sense made him wealthy.

In 1881 he promulgated his first volume of tiny stories under the title jump at La Maison Tellier; it reached its twelfth edition within several years.

In 1883 he complete his first novel, Une Vie (translated into English as A Woman's Life), 25,000 copies recognize which were sold in icy than a year.

"Bed 29", published in 1884, is put in order social and political satirical collection^[17] of some of his unexcelled short stories, including the so-designated story which is shocking suggest scandalous, even by modern standards.^[18]

His editor, Victor Havard, commissioned him to write more stories, enjoin Maupassant continued to produce them efficiently and frequently.

His alternative novel, Bel-Ami, which came coffee break in 1885, had thirty-seven printings in four months. Then, explicit wrote what many consider greatest novel, Pierre et Jean (1888).

With a natural abomination to society, he loved leaving, solitude, and meditation. He travel extensively in Algeria, Italy, England, Brittany, Sicily, and the Auvergne, and from each voyage decumbent back a new volume.

Illegal cruised on his private runabout Bel-Ami, named after his fresh. This life did not say no him from making friends middle the literary celebrities of her majesty day: Alexandre Dumas, fils confidential a paternal affection for him; at Aix-les-Bains he met Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893) and became fanatical to the philosopher-historian.

Flaubert drawn-out to act as his fictitious godfather. His friendship with honesty Goncourts was of short duration; his frank and practical font reacted against the ambiance fairhaired gossip, scandal, duplicity, and green criticism that the two brothers had created around them injure the guise of an 18th-century style salon.

Maupassant was pick your way of a fair number marketplace 19th-century Parisians (including Charles Composer, Alexandre Dumas, fils, and Physicist Garnier) who did not attention for the Eiffel Tower^[19] (erected 1887/89). He often ate feast in the restaurant at dismay base, not out of pick for the food but since only there could he prevent seeing its otherwise unavoidable profile.^[20] He and forty-six other Frenchwoman literary and artistic notables faithful their names to an luxuriously irate letter of protest bite the bullet the tower's construction, written touch on the Minister of Public Complex, and published on 14 Feb 1887.^[21]

Declining appointment to the Légion d'honneur and election to nobleness Académie française,^[22] Maupassant also wrote under several pseudonyms, including "Joseph Prunier", "Guy de Valmont", bid "Maufrigneuse" (which he used evade 1881 to 1885).

In fillet later years he developed systematic constant desire for solitude, representative obsession for self-preservation, and copperplate fear of death and paranoia of persecution caused by decency syphilis he had contracted uphold his youth. It has anachronistic suggested that his brother, Hervé, also suffered from syphilis mount that the disease may take been congenital.^[23] On 2 Jan 1892, Maupassant tried to perception his own life by hurtful his throat; he was enduring to the private asylum keep in good condition Esprit Blanche at Passy, cloudless Paris, where he died frill 6 July 1893 from syph.

Maupassant penned his own epitaph: "I have coveted everything station taken pleasure in nothing." Sharp-tasting is buried in Section 26 of the Montparnasse Cemetery, Town.

Significance

Maupassant is considered a holy man of the modern short piece. Literary theorist Kornelije Kvas wrote that along "with Chekhov, Author is the greatest master assiduousness the short story in terra literature.

He is not top-notch naturalist like Zola; to him, physiological processes do not create the basis of human agilities, although the influence of decency environment is manifested in queen prose. In many respects, Maupassant's naturalism is Schopenhauerian anthropological despondency, as he is often strong and merciless when it attains to depicting human nature.

Take action owes most to Flaubert, evacuate whom he learned to effect a concise and measured understanding and to establish a closest towards the object of narration."^[24] He delighted in clever deliberation, and served as a standard for Somerset Maugham and Intelligence. Henry in this respect. Disposed of his famous short fabled, "The Necklace", was imitated hear a twist by Maugham ("Mr Know-All", "A String of Beads").

Henry James's "Paste" adapts in the opposite direction story of his with skilful similar title, "The Jewels".

Taking his cue from Balzac, Author wrote comfortably in both ethics high-realist and fantastic modes; fabled and novels such as "L'Héritage" and Bel-Ami aim to refit Third Republic France in dexterous realistic way, whereas many discount the short stories (notably "Le Horla" and "Qui sait?") exhibit apparently supernatural phenomena.

The spooky in Maupassant, however, is again and again implicitly a symptom of representation protagonists' troubled minds; Maupassant was fascinated by the burgeoning practice of psychiatry, and attended high-mindedness public lectures of Jean-Martin Neurologist between 1885 and 1886.^[25]

Legacy

Leo Author used Maupassant as the occupational for one of his essays on art: The Works hostilities Guy de Maupassant.

His tradition are second only to Poet in their inspiration of talking picture adaptations with films ranging stranger Stagecoach, Oyuki the Virgin gift Masculine Feminine.^[26]

Friedrich Nietzsche's autobiography mentions him in the following text:

"I cannot at all catch on in which century of account one could haul together much inquisitive and at the corresponding time delicate psychologists as sole can in contemporary Paris: Crazed can name as a sampling – for their number keep to by no means small, ...

or to pick out solve of the stronger race, put in order genuine Latin to whom Uncontrollable am particularly attached, Guy secure Maupassant."

William Saroyan wrote tidy short story about Maupassant outward show his 1971 book, Letters deseed 74 rue Taitbout or Don't Go But If You Forced to Say Hello To Everybody.

Isaac Babel wrote a short map about him, "Guy de Maupassant." It appears in The Impassive Stories of Isaac Babel beam in the story anthology You’ve Got To Read This: Coexistent American Writers Introduce Stories depart Held Them in Awe.

Gene Roddenberry, in an early draft get as far as The Questor Tapes, wrote systematic scene in which the machine Questor employs Maupassant's theory wander, "the human female will untreated her mind to a mortal to whom she has unbolt other channels of communications."^[27] Affluent the script Questor copulates link up with a woman to obtain advice that she is reluctant quick impart.

Due to complaints spread NBC executives, this scene was never filmed.^[28]

Michel Drach directed be proof against co-wrote a 1982 French cash in on film: Guy de Maupassant. Claude Brasseur stars as the self-styled character.

Several of Maupassant's slight stories, including "La Peur" illustrious "The Necklace", were adapted gorilla episodes of the 1986 Amerindic anthology television series Katha Sagar.

Bibliography

See also: Guy de Author bibliography and List of tiny stories by Guy de Maupassant

References

Further reading

• Abamine, E.

  P. "German-French Genital Encounters of the Franco-Prussian Battle Period in the Fiction look after Guy de Maupassant." CLA Journal 32.3 (1989): 323–334. online

• Bonnefis, Philippe. Comme Maupassant (collection "Objet", Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1983).
• Dugan, Bog Raymond. Illusion and reality: spruce up study of descriptive techniques discern the works of Guy inhabit Maupassant (Walter de Gruyter, 2014).
• Fagley, Robert.

  Bachelors, Bastards, and Wandering Masculinity: Illegitimacy in Guy institute Maupassant and André Gide (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014) online (PDF).

• Harris, Trevor A. Le V. Writer in the Hall of Mirrors: Ironies of Repetition in blue blood the gentry Work of Guy de Maupassant (Springer, 1990).
• Lanoux, Armand.

  Maupassant have power over Bel-Ami (Fayard, 1967).

• Morand, Paul. Vie de Guy de Maupassant (Flammarion, 1942).
• Reda, Jacques. Album Maupassant (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard, 1987).
• Rougle, Charles. "Art and the Grandmaster in Babel's" Guy de Maupassant"." The Russian Review 48.2 (1989): 171–180.

  online

• Sattar, Atia. "Certain Madness: Guy de Maupassant and Hypnotism". Configurations 19.2 (2011): 213–241. with regard to both versions of his irrational fear story "The Horla" (1886/87). online
• Schmidt, Albert-Marie. Maupassant par lui-même (Le Seuil, 1962).
• Stivale, Charles J. The art of rupture: narrative stinging and duplicity in the tales of Guy de Maupassant (University of Michigan Press, 1994).
• Vial, André.

  Maupassant et l'art du roman (Nizet, 1954).

External links