Author Birthday: Guy de Maupassant

From today's Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of the great French short-story writer Guy de Maupassant (books by this author), born Henry-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant in Normandy (1850). Mentored by Gustave Flaubert and befriended by Émile Zola, Ivan Turgenev, and Henry James while Maupassant toiled as a lowly government clerk, the French writer joined the ranks of his famous benefactors in 1880 when he published a collection of stories on the Franco-Prussian war. The title story, "Boule de Suif," takes its name from the main character, a prostitute hypocritically shunned by her fellow stagecoach passengers; a literal translation of her nickname is "Ball of Suet" or "Ball of Fat." The name was a compliment — an ample woman was a rarity in that time of hardship — and the portrait was deeply sympathetic.


Maupassant wrote feverishly for the next decade, completing six novels, three travel books, one book of poetry and another of plays, plus the 300 short stories for which he is best remembered. He attained that rarest achievement for a writer: fame and fortune, critical and popular success, all in his own lifetime. And yet his prosperity, complete with a private yacht he named Bel Ami (Good Friend), could not be fully enjoyed. Maupassant felt the first effects of syphilis in his mid-20s; by his late 30s, the disease was progressing to its final stage. His eyesight weakening, his paranoia growing, Maupassant's writing became increasingly dark and preoccupied with madness. After a failed attempt to shoot himself in the head, he stabbed his own throat, and survived only to be locked in an insane asylum. The last entry in his medical report, written shortly before his death at the age of 42, said, "Monsieur de Maupassant is degenerating to an animal state."

He wrote, "A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption."

And he wrote, "Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness."

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Related Short Story Monday Posts on Lakeside Musing:

"Abandoned" by Guy de Maupassant
"Farewell" by Guy de Maupassant
"The Confession" by Guy de Maupassant