Top 10 Intriguing Facts about Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant. Photo by Nadar. WIKIMEDIA

Top 10 Intriguing Facts about Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant was born on 5 August 1850 in France. He was the first son of Laure Le Poitevin and Gustave de Maupassant,

His parents were both from prosperous bourgeois families. His mother urged his father when they married in 1846 to obtain the right to use the form “de Maupassant” instead of “Maupassant” as his family name. This was to indicate noble birth.

Guy de Maupassant was a French author. He is remembered as a master of the short story form.

Additionally, Guy de Maupassant was a representative of the Naturalist school. He depicted human lives, destinies and social forces in disillusioned and often pessimistic terms.

Let’s look at the Top 10 Intriguing Facts about Guy de Maupassant

1. He Retained a Marked Hostility to Region at a Tender Age

At age thirteen, Maupassant was placed as a day boarder together with his brother in a private school. For classical studies in Institution Leroy-Petit, in Rouen.

From his early education, Guy de Maupassant retained a marked hostility to religion. He composed verses that deplored the ecclesiastical atmosphere, its ritual and discipline. This led him to be expelled in his penultimate year.

 In 1868 he was sent to the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen. He proved a good scholar indulging in poetry and taking a prominent part in theatricals.

In the autumn of 1869, he began law studies in Paris. However, his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War.

2.  Enlisted as a Volunteer during the Franco-Prussian War

Guy de Maupassant. Author E. Renouar on Wikimedia

During the Franco-Prussian war, Maupassant volunteered. He served first as a private in the field. In 1871, he left Normandy and moved to Paris where he spent ten years as a clerk in the Navy Department.

During this time his only recreation and relaxation were boating on Sundays and holidays. His firsthand experience of war was to provide him with the material for some of his finest stories.

However, he was demobilized in 1871. He resumed his law studies in Paris.

3. Apprenticeship with a French Novelist

Maupassant’s mother sent him to make Flaubert’s acquaintance at Croisset in 1867. when he returned to Paris after the war, she asked Flaubert to keep an eye on him.

 This was the beginning of the apprenticeship that was the making of Maupassant the writer. Flaubert used to invite Maupassant on lunch on Sundays when staying in Paris.

He would lecture Maupassant on prose style and correct his youthful literary exercises. Flaubert introduced Maupassant to some of the leading writers of the time.

The writers were Émile Zola, Ivan Turgenev, Edmond Goncourt, and Henry James. “He’s my disciple and I love him like a son,” Flaubert said of Maupassant.

4. He Published some Stories Under Several Pseudonyms

Guy de Maupassant. Author Alphonse Liébert. WIKIMEDIA

During his apprenticeship with Flaubert, Maupassant published one or two stories. The stories were under a pseudonym in obscure provincial magazines.

Additionally, Maupassant also wrote under several pseudonyms, including Joseph Prunier, Guy de Valmont, and Maufrigneuse. He used Maufrigneuse from 1881 to 1885.

5. One of the Six Writers to Contributed a Short Story on the Franco-Prussian War

Maupassant contributed a short story on the Franco-Prussian war to a volume called Les Soirées de Médan. The team was led by Zola.

Maupassant’s story, Boule de suif (“Ball of Fat”), was not only by far the best of the six. it was probably the finest story he ever wrote. He published the story in 1880.

The story was met with instant and tremendous success. Flaubert characterized it as “a masterpiece that will endure.” It was followed by short stories such as “Deux Amis”, “Mother Savage”, and “Mademoiselle Fifi”.

6. He published over 300 Short Stories and Six Novels

Collections of short stories and novels followed one another in quick succession. This was until illness struck Maupassant down. Maupassant published some 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and his only volume of verse.

Two years saw six new books of short stories: Mademoiselle Fifi (1883), Contes de la bécasse (1883; “Tales of the Goose”), Clair de lune, Les Soeurs Rondoli (“The Rondoli Sisters”), Yvette, and Miss Harriet.

Maupassant’s full-length novels were Une Vie, Bel-Ami (1885; “Good Friend”), and Pierre et Jean (1888). Bel-Ami is drawn from the author’s observation of the world of sharp businessmen and cynical journalists in Paris.

7. He hated the Eiffel Tower

Maupassant was one of a fair number of 19th-century Parisians who disliked the Eiffel Tower. He and 46 other Parisian literary and artistic notables attached their names to a letter of protest.

The letter was against the tower’s construction. It was written to the Minister of Public Works.

Additionally, He often ate lunch in the restaurant at its base. This was not out of preference for the food but because it was only there that he could avoid seeing it.

8. Genre and Writing Style of Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant wrote in the Naturalism genre of literature. Naturalism is a subgenre of Realism. It focuses on detachment, objectivity, and social commentary.

Naturalism, like Realism, tends to portray characters and settings that could exist in the real world and the plotlines are plausible. Maupassant’s short stories and books focus on many themes.

The themes were such as war, prostitution, life in provincial France, religion, marriage, and infidelity. His realistic portrayal of life made his books and short stories accessible to those belonging to any social class. This was especially the lives of those in the middle and lower classes.

9. Tried to Commit Suicide by Cutting his Throat

Maupassant contracted Syphilis in his youth. He developed a constant desire for solitude, an obsession for self-preservation, a fear of death and paranoia of persecution.

  On 2 January 1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat. However, he was committed to the private asylum of Esprit Blanche at Passy, in Paris., where he died on 6 July 1893 from syphilis.

10. Maupassant penned his Epitaph

Before his death, Maupassant penned down a phrase in honour of his memory after death.

 “I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing.” He was buried in Section 26 of the Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris.

Maupassant is considered the father of the modern short story. He delighted in clever plotting and his style of writing influenced Somerset Maugham and O. Henry.

Leo Tolstoy used Maupassant as the subject for one of his essays on art, The Works of Guy de Maupassant.