And not merely in this discrowning, this involuntary and, therefore, so much more powerful discrowning of sexual love, do we see the author's moral growth; we see it also in all those higher and ever higher demands which he makes on life.
Not only in sexual love does he see the inner contradiction between the demands of the animal and of the rational man,—he sees it in the whole structure of the world.
He sees that the world, the material world, such as it is, is not only not the best of worlds, but, on the contrary, might have been quite different,—this idea is strikingly expressed in Horla,—and does not satisfy the demands of reason and of love; he sees that there is a certain other world, or at least there are the demands for such a world, in man's soul.
He is tormented, not only by the irrationality of the material world and the absence of beauty in it, but also by its lack of love, by its disunion. I know of no more heartrending cry of despair of an erring man who recognizes his loneliness, than the expression of this idea in the exquisite story, Solitude.
The phenomenon which more than any other tortured Maupassant, and to which he frequently returned, is the agonizing state of loneliness, the spiritual loneliness of a man, that barrier which stands between a man and others, that barrier which, as he says, is felt the more painfully, the closer the bodily contact.
What is it that tortures him? And what would he have? What destroys this barrier, what puts a stop to this loneliness? Love, not love of woman, of which he is tired, but pure, spiritual, divine love. And it is this that Maupassant seeks; toward this saviour of life, which was long ago clearly revealed to all, that he painfully tugs at the fetters with which he feels himself bound.
He is not yet able to name what he is seeking, he does not want to name it with his lips alone, for fear of defiling his sanctuary. But his unnamed striving, which is expressed by his terror in the presence of solitude, is so sincere that it infects us and draws us more powerfully than many, very many sermons of love, which are enunciated with the lips alone.
The tragedy of Maupassant's life consists in this, that, living in surroundings that are terrible because of their monstrousness and immorality, he by the force of his talent, that unusual light which was in him, broke away from the world-conception of his circle, was near to liberation, already breathed the air of freedom, but, having spent his last strength in this struggle, perished without becoming free, because he did not have the strength to make this one last effort.
The tragedy of this ruin consists in the same in which it even now continues to consist for the majority of the so-called men of our time.