The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 | Page 2

does
not impress you specially by the fidelity of its detail; it has just enough
of ordinary human feeling for the limits it has imposed on itself. What
impresses you is the extreme ingenuity of its handling; the way in
which this juggler keeps his billiard-balls harmoniously rising and
falling in the air. Often, indeed, you cannot help noticing the conscious
smile which precedes the trick, and the confident bow which concludes
it. He does not let you into the secret of the trick, but he prevents you
from ignoring that it is after all, only a trick which you have been
watching.
There is a philosophy of one kind or another behind the work of every
artist. Maupassant's was a simple one, sufficient for his needs as he
understood them, though perhaps really consequent upon his artistic
methods, rather than at the root of them. It was the philosophy of
cynicism: the most effectual means of limiting one's outlook, of
concentrating all one's energies on the task in hand. Maupassant wrote
for men of the world, and men of the world are content with the

wisdom of their counting-houses. The man of the world is perfectly
willing to admit that he is no better than you, because he takes it for
granted that you will admit yourself to be no better than he. It is a way
of avoiding comparison. To Maupassant this cynical point of view was
invaluable for his purpose. He wanted to tell stories just for the
pleasure of telling them; he wanted to concern himself with his story
simply as a story; incidents interested him, not ideas, nor even
characters, and he wanted every incident to be immediately effective.
Now cynicism, in France, supplies a sufficient basis for all these
requirements; it is the equivalent, for popular purposes, of that appeal
to the average which in England is sentimentality. Compare, for
instance, the admirable story "Boule de Suif," perhaps the best story
which Maupassant ever wrote, with a story of somewhat similar
motive--Bret Harte's "Outcasts of Poker Flat." Both stories are pathetic;
but the pathos of the American (who had formed himself upon Dickens,
and in the English tradition) becomes sentimental, and gets its success
by being sentimental; while the pathos of the Frenchman (who has
formed himself on Flaubert, and on French lines) gets its success
precisely by being cynical.
And then the particular variety of Maupassant's cynicism was just that
variation of the artistic idea upon the temperament which puts the best
finish upon work necessarily so limited, obliged to be so clenching, as
the short story. Flaubert's gigantic dissatisfaction with life, his really
philosophic sense of its vanity, would have overweighted a writer so
thoroughly equipped for his work as the writer of "Boule de Suif" and
"La Maison Tellier." Maupassant had no time, he allowed himself no
space, to reason about life; the need was upon him to tell story after
story, each with its crisis, its thrill, its summing up of a single existence
or a single action. The sharp, telling thrust that his conception of art
demanded could be given only by a very specious, not very profound,
very forthright, kind of cynicism, like the half kindly, half
contemptuous laugh of the man who tells a good story at the club. For
him it was the point of the epigram.
Maupassant was the man of his period, and his period was that of
Naturalism. In "Les Soirees de Medan," the volume in which "Boule de

Suif" appeared, there is another story called "Sac au Dos," in which
another novelist made his appearance among the five who "publicly
affirmed their literary tendencies" about the central figure of Zola. J. K.
Huysmans, then but at the outset of his slow and painful course through
schools and experiments, was in time to sum up the new tendencies of a
new period, as significantly as Maupassant summed up in his short and
brilliant, and almost undeviating career, the tendencies of that period in
which Taine and science seemed to have at last found out the physical
basis of life. Now it is a new realism which appeals to us: it is the turn
of the soul. The battle which the "Soirees de Medan" helped to win has
been won; having gained our right to deal with humble and unpleasant
and sordidly tragic things in fiction, we are free to concern ourselves
with other things. But though the period has passed, and will not return,
the masterpieces of the period remain. Among these masterpieces are
the novels and short stories of Guy de Maupassant.
ARTHUR SYMONS.

BOULE DE SUIF
For several days, straggling remnants of the routed army had passed
through the town. There was no question of organized troops, it was
simply a disjointed