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Updated: May 10, 2025
Since Poe, it has grown conscious of itself, and has been deliberately developed to perfection by later masters, like Guy de Maupassant. But it must be admitted frankly that brief tales have always existed, and still continue to exist, which stand entirely outside the scope of this rigid and rather narrow definition.
Neither had he, as yet, any fixed theories of art or definite style of his own, imitating as he was now de Maupassant, now O. Henry, now Poe; but also it must be said that slowly and surely he was approximating one, original and forceful and water-clear in expression and naturalness. At times he veered to a rather showy technique, at others to a cold and even harsh simplicity.
This sweeping condemnation of the narrative attitude of one of the best-beloved of the great masters sounds just a little bigoted. It is true, of course, that the strictest artists in fiction, like Guy de Maupassant, prefer to tell their tales impersonally: they leave their characters rigidly alone, and allow the reader to see them without looking through the author's personality.
That French prof had introduced me to Voltaire, Hugo, Balzac, Maupassant and others who were becoming my new idols. This was art, this was beauty and truth, this was getting at life in a way that thrilled. But now and then looking up from my book I would see Joe prowling about the place, taking down a book, then shoving it back and scowling as he ran his eyes along whole rows of titles.
Annette had once given him a story to read by that Frenchman, Maupassant a most lugubrious concern, where all the skeletons emerged from their graves one night, and all the pious inscriptions on the stones were altered to descriptions of their sins. Not a true story at all.
It is not exact to say that the lofty genius of De Maupassant was that of an absolutely sane man. We comprehend it to-day, and, on re-reading him, we find traces everywhere of his final malady. But it is exact to say that this wounded genius was, by a singular circumstance, the genius of a robust man.
They explain why De Maupassant, in the early years of production, voluntarily chose, as the heroes of his stories, creatures very near to primitive existence, peasants, sailors, poachers, girls of the farm, and the source of the vigor with which he describes these rude figures.
Inevitably they marchent a la mort and they are very near the truth of our common destiny: their fate is poignant, it is intensely interesting, and of not the slightest consequence. To introduce Maupassant to English readers with apologetic explanations as though his art were recondite and the tendency of his work immoral would be a gratuitous impertinence.
Finally, there is always to be taken into account what one may term the author's philosophy of life, his attitude toward the common problems of humanity; and here it is that Maupassant is most lacking, for his opinions are negligible and his attempts at intellectual speculation are of slight value. Technic can be acquired; and Maupassant had studied at the feet of that master technician Flaubert.
And just as the author of "Education sentimentale" seems to have inherited in the paternal line the shrewd realism of Champagne, so de Maupassant appears to have inherited from his Lorraine ancestors their indestructible discipline and cold lucidity.
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