Celebrating French Writer Guy De Maupassant’s 174Th Birth Anniversary
Why I Love This Guy + a Special Offer
I love Guy de Maupassant!
I was about 12 when I discovered one of his novels on my parents’ top bookshelf. It was an austere hardcover book, with no image on its cover, contrary to other paperbacks I used to discreetly snatch away to read at night.
Maybe the title, “A Life” appealed to me, but I don’t remember why I chose this book among all the others covering the wall, waiting to be read in my father’s study. Yes, although my father didn’t work at home, he had a room of his own whereas my staying-at-home mother didn’t, and I still struggle to have my own space (maybe I’ll write about this someday).
The power of words
But back to Maupassant. The novel I innocently picked that day was the first true piece of literature I ever encountered. And it came as a shock. An aesthetic one. I clearly remember the sensation of a whole new world opening to me as I discovered Maupassant’s beautifully crafted words. More than the story, I felt knocked out by how it was written.
This was my first meeting with the power of words. A revelation! I felt dazzled. It changed my life as I have ever since become an avid reader (as well as an aspiring writer).
Maupassant wrote 6 novels and 300 short stories, a genre in which he excelled. In some of these, he depicts the misery of peasants’ lives, poor people, prostitutes, abandoned mothers, and their tragic destinies with a rare sense of compassion, and in a realistic approach.
“A Life” is also a sad story; it tells the life of Jeanne, a naive, woman, badly married in a 19th-century French bourgeois setting, exposing the difficulties women went through in a time long before woman’s lib. Yet, the last words of the novel deliver a sweet-and-sour glimmer of hope, as Jeanne is holding her son’s baby:
“Life, you see, is never so good nor or so bad as people think”. https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.241413/page/n227/mode/2up?view=theater
From then on, I read and enjoyed “literature” and grew to love many other writers.
But Maupassant was the first and thus holds a special place in my list of favorite writers.
Maupassant’s life
Whenever I read a new book, I always made a point of reading introductions, prefaces, and anything that would tell me about the author’s life and work. That’s how I found out Maupassant’s life had been harsh and short. He died at 42.
But in such a short life, he succeeded in leaving a huge literary legacy that we can still enjoy today. In part, thanks to Flaubert’s mentoring.
Although his stories paint a pessimistic vision of human destiny, their deep understanding of his characters’ psychology brings comfort to the reader. Maybe Maupassant’s sympathy for his fellow humans came from the difficulties he went through in his own life.
As I grew interested in genealogy and psychogenealogy, I studied Maupassant’s life and wrote about it.
As today is Mapassant’s birthday, I am offering a discount on the Kindle edition of A Writer and His Doppelganger: Guy De Maupassant’s Tragic Fate Deciphered Through Psychogenealogy
It’s even cheaper as a PDF.
And please, if you haven’t yet, read Maupassant’s work. To discover him, I would suggest beginning with his short stories. You can find them online for free.
Guy gave you a lot of mental and intellectual space to pursue your interests and passions.