But Maupassant's stories are singularly different in character. In the
nineteenth century the Gallic intellect had long since foundered amid
vileness and debauchery. In the provinces the ancient humor had
disappeared; one chattered still about nothing, but without point,
without wit; "trifling" was over, as they call it in Champagne. The
nauseating pabulum of the newspapers and low political intrigue had
withered the French intellect, that delicate, rare intellect, the last
traces of which fade away in the Alsatian stories of Erckman-Chatrian,
in the Provençal tales of Alphonse Daudet, in the novels of Emile
Pouvillon. Maupassant is not one of them. He knows nothing about
humor, for he never found it in Life....
His ambition was not to make one laugh; he writes for the pleasure of
recalling, without bias, what, to him, seems a halfway and dangerous
truth.... In his pessimism, Maupassant despises the race, society,
civilization and the world....
If Maupassant draws from anyone it is Schopenhauer and Herbert
Spencer, of whom he often speaks, although one does not know if he
studied them very deeply. In all his books, excepting, of course, in
the case of lines from the great tragic poets, one finds only one
credited reference, which in to Sir John Lubbock's work on ants, an
extract from which is introduced into Yvette.
No one was less bookish than himself. He was a designer, and one of
the greatest in literature. His heroes, little folk, artisans or
rustics, bureaucrats or shopkeepers, prostitutes or rakes, he places
them in faintly colored, but well-defined surroundings. And,
immediately, the simplified landscape gives the keynote of the story.
In his descriptions he resists the temptation of asserting his
personal view. He will not allow himself to see more of his landscape
than his characters themselves see. He is also careful to avoid all
refined terms and expressions, to introduce no element superior to the
characters of his heroes.
He never makes inanimate nature intervene directly in human
tribulations; she laughs at our joys and our sorrows.... Once, only,
in one of his works, the trees join in the universal mourning--the
great, sad beeches weep in autumn for the soul, the little soul, of la
petite Roque.
And yet Maupassant adores this nature, the one thing that moves
him.... But, in spite of this, he can control himself; the artist is
aware of the danger to his narration should he indulge in the
transports of a lover.
With an inborn perception, Maupassant at once seizes on the principal
detail, the essential peculiarity that distinguishes a character and
builds round it. He also, in the presentation of his character,
assumes an authority that no writer, not even Balzac, ever
equalled....
He traces what he sees with rapid strokes. His work is a vast
collection of powerful sketches, synthetic draftings. Like all great
artists, he was a simplifier; he knew how to "sacrifice" like the
Egyptians and Greeks....
Thanks to his rapid methods the master "cinematographed," if I may use
the word, inexhaustible stories. Among them, each person may find
himself represented, the artist, the clerk, the thinker, and the
non-commissioned officer.