Original Short Stories of Maupassant

Maupassant Guy De

Description

Over the course of his career, French writer Guy de Maupassant made a number of important contributions to the then-emergent genre of short stories. Today, critics regard him as one of the most accomplished virtuosos of short fiction. This comprehensive collection of Maupassant's short works showcases the writer's unique talents, which include an unvarnished, straightforward style and a mastery of narrative structure.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776587391
• Langue: English

Extrait

ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES OF MAUPASSANT
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
Translated by
ALBERT M. C. MCMASTER
A. E. HENDERSON
 
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Original Short Stories of Maupassant Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-739-1 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-740-7 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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VOLUME I Guy de Maupassant—A Study by Pol. Neveux Boule de Suif Two Friends The Lancer's Wife The Prisoners Two Little Soldiers Father Milon A Coup D'Etat Lieutenant Lare's Marriage The Horrible Madame Parisse Mademoiselle Fifi A Duel VOLUME II The Colonel's Ideas Mother Sauvage Epiphany The Mustache Madame Baptiste The Question of Latin A Meeting The Blind Man Indiscretion A Family Affair Beside Schopenhauer's Corpse VOLUME III Miss Harriet Little Louise Roque The Donkey Moiron The Dispenser of Holy Water A Parricide Bertha The Patron The Door A Sale The Impolite Sex A Wedding Gift The Relic VOLUME IV The Moribund The Gamekeeper The Story of a Farm Girl The Wreck Theodule Sabot's Confession The Wrong House The Diamond Necklace The Marquis de Fumerol The Trip of Le Horla Farewell! The Wolf The Inn VOLUME V Monsieur Parent Queen Hortense Timbuctoo Tombstones Mademoiselle Pearl The Thief Clair de Lune Waiter, a "Bock" After Forgiveness In the Spring A Queer Night in Paris VOLUME VI That Costly Ride Useless Beauty The Father My Uncle Sosthenes The Baroness Mother and Son The Hand A Tress of Hair On the River The Cripple A Stroll Alexandre The Log Julie Romain The Rondoli Sisters VOLUME VII The False Gems Fascination Yvette Samoris A Vendetta My Twenty-Five Days "The Terror" Legend of Mont St. Michel A New Year's Gift Friend Patience Abandoned The Maison Tellier Denis My Wife The Unknown The Apparition VOLUME VIII Clochette The Kiss The Legion of Honor The Test Found on a Drowned Man The Orphan The Beggar The Rabbit His Avenger My Uncle Jules The Model A Vagabond The Fishing Hole The Spasm In the Wood Martine All Over The Parrot The Piece of String VOLUME IX Toine Madame Husson's "Rosier" The Adopted Son Coward Old Mongilet Moonlight The First Snowfall Sundays of a Bourgeois A Recollection Our Letters The Love of Long Ago Friend Joseph The Effeminates Old Amable VOLUME X The Christening The Farmer's Wife The Devil The Snipe The Will Walter Schnaffs' Adventure At Sea Minuet The Son That Pig of a Morin Saint Anthony Lasting Love Pierrot A Normandy Joke Father Matthew VOLUME XI The Umbrella Belhomme's Beast Discovery The Accursed Bread The Dowry The Diary of a Madman The Mask The Penguins' Rock A Family Suicides An Artifice Dreams Simon's Papa VOLUME XII The Child A Country Excursion Rose Rosalie Prudent Regret A Sister's Confession Coco Dead Woman's Secret A Humble Drama Mademoiselle Cocotte The Corsican Bandit The Grave VOLUME XIII Old Judas The Little Cask Boitelle A Widow The Englishman of Etretat Magnetism A Father's Confession A Mother of Monsters An Uncomfortable Bed A Portrait The Drunkard The Wardrobe The Mountain Pool A Cremation Misti Madame Hermet The Magic Couch Endnotes
VOLUME I
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Guy de Maupassant—A Study by Pol. Neveux
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"I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like athunderbolt." These words of Maupassant to Jose Maria de Heredia on theoccasion of a memorable meeting are, in spite of their morbid solemnity,not an inexact summing up of the brief career during which, for tenyears, the writer, by turns undaunted and sorrowful, with the fertilityof a master hand produced poetry, novels, romances and travels, only tosink 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 bya name as yet unknown: Guy de Maupassant. After a juvenile diatribeagainst romanticism and a passionate attack on languorous literature,the writer extolled the study of real life, and announced thepublication of the new work. It was picturesque and charming. In thequiet of evening, on an island, in the Seine, beneath poplars insteadof the Neapolitan cypresses dear to the friends of Boccaccio, amidthe continuous murmur of the valley, and no longer to the sound of thePyrennean streams that murmured a faint accompaniment to the talesof Marguerite's cavaliers, the master and his disciples took turns innarrating some striking or pathetic episode of the war. And the issue,in collaboration, of these tales in one volume, in which the masterjostled 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 theyhad confined themselves, beneath the trees of Medan, to deciding on ageneral title for the work. Zola had contributed the manuscript of the"Attaque du Moulin," and it was at Maupassant's house that the fiveyoung men gave in their contributions. Each one read his story,Maupassant being the last. When he had finished Boule de Suif, witha spontaneous impulse, with an emotion they never forgot, filled withenthusiasm at this revelation, they all rose and, without superfluouswords, acclaimed him as a master.
He undertook to write the article for the Gaulois and, in cooperationwith his friends, he worded it in the terms with which we are familiar,amplifying and embellishing it, yielding to an inborn taste formystification which his youth rendered excusable. The essential point,he said, is to "unmoor" criticism.
It was unmoored. The following day Wolff wrote a polemical dissertationin the Figaro and carried away his colleagues. The volume was abrilliant success, thanks to Boule de Suif. Despite the novelty, thehonesty of effort, on the part of all, no mention was made of the otherstories. Relegated to the second rank, they passed without notice. Fromhis first battle, Maupassant was master of the field in literature.
At once the entire press took him up and said what was appropriateregarding the budding celebrity. Biographers and reporters soughtinformation concerning his life. As it was very simple and perfectlystraightforward, they resorted to invention. And thus it is that at thepresent day Maupassant appears to us like one of those ancient heroeswhose origin and death are veiled in mystery.
I will not dwell on Guy de Maupassant's younger days. His relatives, hisold friends, he himself, here and there in his works, have furnished usin their letters enough valuable revelations and touching remembrancesof the years preceding his literary debut. His worthy biographer,H. Edouard Maynial, after collecting intelligently all the writings,condensing and comparing them, has been able to give us some definiteinformation regarding that early period.
I will simply recall that he was born on the 5th of August, 1850, nearDieppe, in the castle of Miromesnil which he describes in Une Vie....
Maupassant, like Flaubert, was a Norman, through his mother, and throughhis place of birth he belonged to that strange and adventurous race,whose heroic and long voyages on tramp trading ships he liked torecall. And just as the author of "Education sentimentale" seems to haveinherited in the paternal line the shrewd realism of Champagne, so deMaupassant appears to have inherited from his Lorraine ancestors theirindestructible discipline and cold lucidity.
His childhood was passed at Etretat, his beautiful childhood; itwas there that his instincts were awakened in the unfoldment of hisprehistoric soul. Years went by in an ecstasy of physical happiness. Thedelight of running at full speed through fields of gorse, the charmof voyages of discovery in hollows and ravines, games beneath the darkhedges, a passion for going to sea with the fishermen and, on nightswhen there was no moon, for dreaming on their boats of imaginaryvoyages.
Mme. de Maupassant, who had guided her son's early reading, and hadgazed with him at the sublime spectacle of nature, put, off as long aspossible the hour of separation. One day, however, she had to take thechild to the little seminary at Yvetot. Later, he became a studentat the college at Rouen, and became a literary correspondent of LouisBouilhet. It was at the latter's house on those Sundays in winter whenthe Norman rain drowned the sound of the bells and dashed against thewindow panes that the school boy learned to write poetry.
Vacation took the rhetorician back to the north of Normandy. Now it wasshooting at Saint Julien l'Hospitalier, across fields, bogs, and throughthe woods. From that time on he sealed his pact with the earth, andthose "deep and delicate roots" which attached him to his native soilbegan to grow. It was of Normandy, broad, fresh and virile, that hewould presently demand his inspiration, fervent and eager as a boy'slove; it was in her that he would take refuge when, weary of life, hewould implore a truce, or when he simply wished to work and revive hisenergies in old-time joys. It was at this time that was born in him thatvoluptuous love of the sea, which in later days could alone withdraw himfrom the world, calm him, console him.
In 1870 he lived in the country, then he came to Paris to live; for,the family fortunes having dwindled, he had to look for a position. Forseveral years he was a clerk in the Ministry of Marine, where he turnedover musty papers, in the uninteresting company of the clerks of theadmiralty.
Then he went into the department of Public Instruction, wherebureaucratic servility is less intoler