Maupassant, Henri Rene Albert Guy de

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

mo-pa-san', Henri Rene Albert Guy de (1850-1893), a French novelist. As a young man De Maupassant was a navy department clerk and also served in the army. His godfather was Flaubert, a novelist, who gave him careful training in the art of composition. He published nothing until he was thirty years old, having meanwhile produced and destroyed a large number of manuscripts. His first publication was A Piece of String, a short story whose most striking characteristic is the realistic manner in which a trifling incident is made responsible for a man's ruin and death. The story wins admiration for its execution. It is not pleasing, nor instructive, nor inspiring, nor beautiful. De Maupassant produced six novels, of which Pierre et Jean is the best. Of his many short stories The Necklace is mentioned with A Piece of String as representative of the author's peculiar ability. Both stories are finished with the utmost care, both are realistic, and both treat of important results from insignificant occurrences. In A Piece of String, however, the chief character, although he knows the truth, allows himself to succumb to the opinion of those who are deceived; while in The Necklace the commonplace heroine is herself deceived, but sacrifices years of her life to be true to her own ideas of honesty. The discovery that her sacrifice has been needless is a powerful picture of the irony of fate, but we may at least admire the woman's strong adherence to principle. De Maupassant's later works show signs of the mental disease which resulted in insanity two years before his death. Thirteen of his best short stories have been published in English under the title of The Odd One.