The short-story nomenclature among the French is not clearly translatable, for three reasons—we have no precise English equivalents, critics do not entirely agree upon what equivalents are nearest to the French terms, and, best reason of all, the French short-stories have this in common with all others: their forms often overlap, and so bear marks of touching more than one type. And when I have said this I have said nothing to their discredit; only the Procrustean purist first builds a bed and then stretches or cuts every story-guest to fit! I cannot say this in voice loud enough: to set up a standard of what is a true short-story is no more to decry those short fictive narratives which do not meet the form than it would be to brand the lyric as imperfect because it does not fulfill the requirements of the epic.
But, to be specific, the three terms which we constantly meet in French fiction are roman, nouvelle, and conte. The roman may be dismissed as a general term standing largely for what we in English variously denominate the (long) romance, the novel, and the (long) tale. The nouvelle most nearly approaches our English short-story, but it also stands for the novelette, or very short novel, or even the expanded short-story. The conte is really a generic word for a short fictional narrative or any story that is short, like the tale, the anecdote, and the fictional sketch, without meaning specifically the short-story to whose characteristics of compression, unity of impression, and crisis, climax and dénouement of plot, I have just referred.
So I repeat: in these studies the term short-story must be given some latitude of interpretation.
The French short-story of the last eighty years is not only typically Gallic but characteristic of the period. Just as there are four tests of nationality in fiction so there are four forces which contribute to its periodicity: The influence of the soil, the heritage of the preceding period, the special characteristics of the period itself, and the influence of surrounding nations. All these result in what may be called the Spirit of the Period, concerning which a word must be said presently.
The primacy of the French as conteurs is doubtless due quite as much to the rich and colorful provincial life which surrounds the capital as to their priority as tellers of short tales. It has been said that Paris is France. Nothing could be less true. Here is a nation which presents the unique paradox of being at once and supremely homogeneous and heterogeneous. The life of each province is part of its soil, colored by the soil—or by the ever-present sea. Yet France has a spirit of nationality equalled by no other nation. While what is now the German Empire was still an unrelated number of minor peoples or an integral part of some vaster state, France was a unified or at least a closely federated kingdom. While Britain was changing under its successive tides of invasion, what was essentially France was sending out its national culture world-wide—it over-climbed the Pyrenees, it spread into the Low Countries, in the west it conquered the Swiss tongue, it permeated the Rhenish provinces, it implanted Norman life in Britain. Thus grew the French national spirit.
Yet the provinces held tenaciously to their own picturesque types, spoke their more than a hundred patois, wore their folk costumes, sang their native songs, danced their own dances—unchanging through the centuries. And nowhere more than in the French short-story may we see depicted the peculiar French provincial traits. The folk of Champagne and Picardy are shrewd, subtle, ardent, and born conteurs—witness the stories of Juliette Lamber. Those of Berry are stolid and solid, as pictured by Madame Nahant. The Gascons are vivacious, daring, and cunning, as set forth by Emil Pouvillon. The people of Languedoc are simple, strong and violent, as described by Georges Baume. The happy, excitable sun-children of Provence, reveling among their olive groves and vineyards, have been portrayed by Alphonse Daudet; the picturesque Provençal sailors and fisherfolk live again in the stories of Auguste Marin; while Paul Arène has done loving service not only for Provence but for Maine as well. Maupassant has given us notable portraits of the Norman—bold, tricky, ambitious, economical, and of superb physique as befits the sons of sturdy men-at-arms. Loti’s stories are redolent of the salty spume of rough, melancholy, religious Brittany. And so, in the same recognition of rich material, Theuriet paints Lorraine, Erckmann and Chatrian the Rhine province of Alsace, Fabre the Cévennes, Anatole le Braz the Breton coast, Mérimée Corsica, Maupassant Auverne, and Balzac Touraine. What a wonderful color box has the French story-painter always open to his brush! Truly the soil and the sea have marked this period of the short-story as well as the novel.
The inheritance of the preceding period—that of the Revolution, the First Empire, and the First Restoration—was rich in war pictures, dramatic episodes of intrigue, and a never-so-remarkable display of contrasts in human passion and changing conditions. The French short-story is therefore full of these national conditions.
The period itself, 1830-1912, witnessed kaleidoscopic social and governmental changes—the Second Restoration, the Bourgeois Monarchy, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, the Franco-Prussian War, the Commune, and the Third Republic, to say nothing of numberless minor attempts at change. All these filled the story-teller’s pack with rich national materials. Especially are the problems of socialism, militarism and clericalism in evidence.
Finally, the influence of surrounding peoples has been felt not only in the content but in the form of the French short-story.