Guy de Maupassant: The Complete Novels and Short Stories + A Biography of the Author E-Book

Guy de Maupassant

• Herausgeber: Book House Publishing
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

This book contains several HTML tables of contents.The first table of contents (at the very beginning of the ebook) lists the titles of all novels included in this volume. By clicking on one of those titles you will be redirected to the beginning of that work, where you'll find a new TOC that lists all the chapters and sub-chapters of that specific work.Here you will find the complete novels and short stories of Guy de Maupassant in the chronological order of their original publication.As you will notice, this book DOES NOT INCLUDE the 65 fake Maupassant stories... stories that weren't written by Maupassant but are always included in all the other so-called complete editions.In order that you can be sure that Maupassant is the author of each and every story contained within these pages, we have included a direct link to the original French stories. You just have to click on the original titles, under the English titles, to be redirected to the French texts.

Leseprobe

Guy de Maupassant

THE COMPLETE NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES

2017 © Book House Publishing

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Table of Contents

Guy de Maupassant — An Extensive Biography

The History of a Heart

Bel Ami

Mont Oriol

Pierre and Jean

Strong as Death

A Woman’s Pastime

Short Stories

Guy de Maupassant — An Extensive Biography

by Ernest Boyd

Chapter 1 — The Age of Innocence

Chapter 2 — The Cautious Adventurer

Chapter 3 — Apprenticeship

Chapter 4 — Initiation

Chapter 5 — Bid for Fame

Chapter 6 — The Meteor

Chapter 7 — Success

Chapter 8 — “The Melancholy Bull”

Chapter 9 — The Thunderbolt

Chapter 10 — Apotheosis

Chapter 1 — The Age of Innocence

In 1850 the subconscious could still call its private life its own, and psychoanalysis had not yet enabled dirty souls to be decorously washed in public. It was possible, therefore, for Madame Laure Le Poittevin de Maupassant to insist complacently that none but she had ever nursed her first-born, Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant, and that her darling boy had not been weaned until he was more than eighteen months old. She did not thereby invite any of the insinuations which that fact, coupled with certain peculiarities of her son’s subsequent career, would at once suggest to an alert psychologist of to-day. At the time when Napoleon the Small was making up the uncertain mind of the Second French Republic, by preparing to pronounce it a Second Empire, simpler preoccupations engaged public attention and governed private conduct. Madame de Maupassant’s boast was regarded as but the becoming expression of her motherly pride in her children, by way of compensation for what her old friend Gustave Flaubert called “the platitudes of marriage,” in a novel which startled Paris the year her second and last child, Hervé, was born.

In 1846 Laure Le Poittevin and her brother Alfred had married, much to the disgust of Flaubert, who wrote to a friend from his retreat at Croisset: “Here everybody is going away and leaving me, even my servant, who doubtless finds me too dull and craves more amusing society. Alfred is married, as you know; he is in Italy with his wife. On his return he will live in Paris. His sister has married his wife’s brother. It is raining marriages; the barometer is at stormy.” And thus was broken up the charming circle of friends from childhood, the Flauberts and the Le Poittevins, whose memory remained with Flaubert to the end of his days, and was to be the bond between Laure de Maupassant and himself, when she at last turned back to him for comfort and advice. With the brilliant, wayward, and bawdy Alfred correspondence was exchanged until the latter’s death in 1848. Of all this there remains a much censored and recently published volume to persuade an age that has forgotten him that there must have been something in the man who was Flaubert’s dearest friend and to whom La Tentation de Saint Antoine was dedicated.

With her two sons Laure de Maupassant filled in her days and nights at Étretat, at Yvetot, in Paris, while her gay young dandy of a husband, Gustave de Maupassant, occupied himself with such pursuits as were natural to a handsome gentleman of the old school, such as Bellange has painted in the portrait of him that hangs in the Rouen Museum. Laure remembered what Gustave Flaubert and Alfred Le Poittevin had been to her as a child, and she set about giving Guy and Hervé the rudiments of an education, in which their father seems to have shown little interest. When Guy was about ten, the Lycée Impérial Napoléon in Paris expressed its official satisfaction with the results of her tuition. “An excellent pupil, whose determination and efforts deserve the highest praise and encouragement. Gradually he will get accustomed to our methods of work and we are confident he will make progress.”

Unfortunately, Guy’s communications were couched in less formal language. “I was first in composition. As a reward Madame de X. took me to the circus with papa. It seems papa is also being rewarded for something, but I don’t know what.” Whereupon it dawned upon the mother that the one thing which she did not want her boys to learn from their father was beginning to have a great interest for the precocious Guy. When the two youngsters were invited to a children’s party given by one of the estimable ladies who enjoyed the confidence of Gustave de Maupassant, Laure decided to stay at home and nurse Hervé, who was not well enough to go. The father did not hesitate to offer his services as a chaperon for Guy, and while the latter dressed, he concealed his impatience as best he could under an air of paternal benevolence:

“If you don’t hurry up, we’ll be late for the party.” “What do I care? It is you who want to go there most, not me.”

“Come along now. Tie your laces.”

“No. You tie them. You know you will sooner or later, so do it now.” And the defenceless parent felt he could refuse his son nothing.

Laure de Maupassant, however, decided that so wicked an example as that of their father must no longer threaten the virtue of her sons, and in 1862 the parents separated in a friendly way. The control of her fortune reverted to the mother, and the father paid an allowance annually for his two children until he lost all his own property. Whereupon Gustave de Maupassant set to work, in defiance of all his family traditions, and made quite a little career for himself in banking, so that in the end he again achieved the French Nirvana, and became once more a rentier and a gentleman. At no time could even Guy’s adoration of his mother induce him to adopt any but an attitude of friendly respect towards that elusive father of his, who disappears from his life as the boy enters his teens and, but for one brief period at the outset of his career in Paris, reappears only after the catastrophe has happened for which he would certainly have been blamed had the parents remained together, for destiny had certainly determined to demonstrate that it is easier to drive out a father than to extirpate human instincts. The records, however, solemnly and reassuringly declare that “it was not until he was sixteen years old” that Maupassant became acquainted with “the degrading passion of love,” to quote the words of an Irish Bishop. Up to that time his life had been “pure,” thanks to the eternal vigilance, presumably, of his anxious mother.

By the time he was thirteen, however, the desultory education which he had been receiving was deemed insufficient, and he was dispatched from Étretat to the Institution Ecclésiastique at the neighbouring village of Yvetot, more renowned in Béranger’s song than for its learning or piety. Here the boy was frankly unhappy. His instinctive rationalism had been encouraged by his mother, and he declared years later that “even as a small boy religious rites and ceremonies offended me. I could see only their ridiculous side.” In this stronghold of the Norman squirearchy, where the stolid offspring of prosperous farmers and country gentlemen were confirmed in the prejudices of their class and the superstitions of their ancestors, Maupassant keenly resented both the physical restraints of his restricted existence and the religious discipline in which the institution was steeped. He began to write his first verses, of which some specimens have been preserved.

La vie est le sillon du vaiseau qui s’éloigne,

C’est l’éphémère fleur qui croît sur la montagne,

C’est l’ombre de l’oiseau qui traverse l’éther,

C’est le cri du marin englouti par la mer...

La vie est un brouillard qui se change en lumière,

C’est l’unique moment donné pour la prière.

They do credit to the talent of a child of thirteen and explain why the first report of his teachers indicated a model pupil. “Conduct: orderly, Work: regular, Character: good, obedient, and diligent; popular with everybody.”

One day, however, when he was overheard parodying a sermon on eternal damnation, he was warned that he could be expelled for less. Whereupon he decided to make his exit in a cloud of glorious obloquy. He inscribed a poem to a young lady, in words more or less to the following effect:

Comment relégué loin du monde,

Privé de l’air, des champs, des bois,

Dans la tristesse qui m’inonde

Faire entendre une douce voix?

Vous m’avez dit: “Chantez des fêtes

Où les fleurs et les diamants

S’enlacent sur le blondes têtes,

Chantez le bonheur des amants.”

Mais dans le cloître solitaire

Où nous sommes ensevelis

Nous ne connaissons sur la terre

Que soutanes et que surplis.

Pauvres exilés que nous sommes

Il faut chanter des biens si doux