The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de MaupassantЧитать онлайн книгу.
This proposal horrifies and offends her (for she loves him); it opens her eyes to her own position and to that of her mother, and she suffers profoundly. This deeply touching scene is admirably described: the collision between a beautiful innocent soul and the depravity of the world. And with that it might end; but the author, without either external or inner necessity, continues to write and makes this man penetrate by night to the girl and seduce her. Evidently in the first part of the story the author was on the girl’s side, but in the later part he has suddenly gone over to the debauchee, and the one impression destroys the other — the whole novel crumbles and falls to pieces like ill-kneaded bread.
In all his novels after Bel-Ami (I am not now speaking of the short stories, which constitute his chief merit and glory — of them later) Maupassant evidently submitted to the theory which ruled not only in his circle in Paris, but which now rules everywhere among artists: that for a work of art it is not only unnecessary to have any clear conception of what is right and wrong, but that, on the contrary, an artist should completely ignore all moral questions, there being even a certain artistic merit in so doing. According to this theory the artist may or should depict what is true to life, what really is, what is beautiful and therefore pleases him, or even what may be useful as material for “science”; but that to care about what is moral or immoral, right or wrong, is not an artist’s’ business.
I remember a celebrated painter showing me one of his pictures representing a religious procession. It was all excellently painted, but no relation of the artist to his subject was perceptible.
“And do you regard these ceremonies as good and consider that they should be performed, or not?” I asked him.
With some condescension to my naïveté, he told me that he did not know about that and did not want to know it; his business was to represent life.
“But at any rate you sympathize with this?”
“I cannot say so.”
“Well then do you dislike these ceremonies?”
“Neither the one thing nor the other,” replied, with a smile of compassion at my silliness, this modern, highly cultured artist who depicted life without understanding its purpose and neither loving nor hating its phenomena.
And so unfortunately thought Maupassant.
In his preface to Pierre et Jean he says that people say to a writer, “Consolez-moi, amusez-moi, attristez-moi, attendrissez-moi, faites-moi rêver, faites-moi rire, faites-moi frémir, faites-moi pleurer, faites-moi penser. Seuls quelques esprits d’élites demandent à Vartiste: faites-moi quelque chose de beau dans la forme qui vous conviendra le mieux d’après votre tempérament.”
(“Console me, amuse me, sadden me, touch my heart, make me dream, make me laugh, make me tremble, make me weep, make me think. Only a few chosen spirits bid the artist compose something beautiful, in the form that best suits his temperament.”)
Responding to this demand of the élite Maupassant wrote his novels, naïvely imagining that what was considered beautiful in his circle was that beauty which art should serve.
And in the circle in which Maupassant moved, the beauty which should be served by art was, and is, chiefly woman — young, pretty, and for the most part naked — and sexual connection with her. It was so considered not only by all Maupassant’s comrades in art — painters, sculptors, novelists, and poets — but also by philosophers, the teachers of the rising generation. Thus the famous Renan, in his work, Marc Aurèle, p. 555, when blaming Christianity for not understanding feminine beauty, plainly says:
“La défaut du christianisme apparaît bien ici. Il est trop uniquement moral; la beauté, chez lui, est tout-à-fait sacrifiée. Or, aux yeux d’une philosophie complète, la beauté, loin d’etre un avantage superficiel, un danger, un inconvénient, est un don de Dieu, comme la vertu. Elle vaut la vertu; la femme belle exprime aussi bien une face du but divin, une des fins de Dieu, que l’homme de génie ou la femme vertueuse. Elle le sent et de là sa fierté. Elle sent instinctivement le trésor infini qu’elle porte en son corps; elle sait bien que, sans esprit, sans talent, sans grande vertu, elle compte entre les premières manifestations de Dieu. Et pourquoi lui interdire de mettre en valeur le don qui lui a été fait, de sertir le diamant qui lui est échu? La femme, en se parant, accomplit un devoir; elle pratique un art, art exquis, en un sens le plus charmant des arts. Ne nous laissons pas égarer par le sourire que certain mots provoquent chez LES GENS FRIVOLES. On décerne le palme du génie à l’artiste grec qui a su résoudre le plus délicat des problèmes, orner le corps humain, c’est à dire orner la perfection même, et Von ne veut voir qu’une affaire de chiffons dans l’essai de collaborer à la plus belle œuvre de Dieu, à la beauté de la femme! La toilette de la femme, avec tous ses raffinements est du grand art à sa manière. Les siècles et les pays qui savent y réussir sont les grands siècles, les grands pays, et le christianisme montra, par l’exclusion dont il frappa ce genre de recherches, que l’idéal social qu’il concevait ne deviendrait le cadre d’une société complète que bien plus tard, quand la révolte des gens du monde aurait brisé le joug étroit imposé primitivement à la secte par un piétisme exalté.”
(The defect of Christianity is clearly seen in this. It is too exclusively moral; it quite sacrifices beauty. But in the eyes of a complete philosophy beauty, far from being a superficial advantage, a danger, an inconvenience, is a gift of God, like virtue. It is worth as much as virtue; the beautiful woman expresses an aspect of the divine purpose, one of God’s aims, as well as a man of genius does, or a virtuous woman. She feels this, and hence her pride. She is instinctively conscious of the infinite treasure she possesses in her body; she is well aware that without intellect, without talent, without great virtue, she counts among the chief manifestations of God. And why forbid her to make the most of the gift bestowed upon her, or to give the diamond allotted to her its due setting? By adorning herself woman accomplishes a duty; she practises an art, an exquisite art, in a sense the most charming of arts. Do not let us be misled by the smile which certain words provoke in the frivolous. We award the palm of genius to the Greek artist who succeeded in solving the most delicate of problems, that of adorning the human body, that is to say, adorning perfection itself, and yet some people wish to see nothing more than an affair of chiffons in the attempt to collaborate with the finest work of God — woman’s beauty! Woman’s toilette with all its refinements is a great art in its own way. The epochs and countries which can succeed in this are the great epochs and great countries, and Christianity, by the embargo it laid on this kind of research, showed that the social ideal it had conceived would only become the framework of a complete society at a much later period, when the revolt of men of the world had broken the narrow yoke originally imposed on the sect by a fanatical pietism.)
(So that in the opinion of this leader of the young generation only now have Paris milliners and coiffeurs corrected the mistake committed by Christianity, and re-established beauty in the true and lofty position due to it.)
In order that there should be no doubt as to how one is to understand beauty, the same celebrated writer, historian, and savant wrote the drama, L’Abbesse de Jouarre, in which he showed that to have sexual intercourse with a woman is a service of this beauty, that is to say, is an elevated and good action. In that drama, which is striking by its lack of talent and especially by the coarseness of the conversations between d’Arcy and the abbesse, in which the first words make it evident what sort of love that gentleman is discussing with the supposedly innocent and highly moral maiden, who is not in the least offended thereby — in that drama it is shown that the most highly moral people, at the approach of death to which they are condemned, a few hours before it arrives, can do nothing more beautiful than yield to their animal passions.
So that in the circle in which Maupassant grew up and was educated, the representation of feminine beauty and sex-love was and is regarded quite seriously, as a matter long ago decided and recognized by the wisest and most learned men, as the true object of the highest art — Le grand art.
And it is this theory, dreadful in its folly, to which Maupassant submitted when he became a fashionable writer; and, as was to be expected, this false ideal led him in his novels into a series of mistakes, and to ever weaker and weaker