these questions carry with them their own answers, which consist in the repudiation of all that the crowd of men so highly prize. The subject of this second novel is still serious, but the moral relation of the author to the subject he describes already weakens considerably, and whereas in the first novel blots and sensuality which spoil it only appear here and there, in Bel-Ami these blots have increased and many chapters are filled with dirt alone, which seems to please the author.
In the next book, Mont-Oriol, the questions: Why, and to what end, does the amiable woman suffer and the savage male secure success and happiness? are no longer put; but it seems tacitly admitted that it should be so, and hardly any moral demands are felt. But without the least necessity, uncalled for by any artistic consideration, dirty sensual descriptions are presented. As an example of this violation of artistic taste, resulting from the author’s incorrect relation to his subject, the detailed description in this novel of the heroine in her bath is specially striking. This description is quite unnecessary, and is in no way connected either with the external or the inner purpose of the novel: “Bubbles appear on her pink skin.”
“Well, what of that?” asks the reader.
“Nothing more,” replies the author. “I describe it because I like such descriptions.”
In the next novels, Pierre et Jean and Fort comme la mort, no moral demand at all is perceptible. Both novels are built on debauchery, deceit, and falsehood, which bring the actors to tragic situations.
In the last novel, Notre cœur, the position of the actors is most monstrous, wild, and immoral; they no longer struggle with anything, but only seek satisfaction for their vanity, sensuality, and sexual desires; and the author appears quite to sympathize with their aims. The only deduction one can draw from this last novel is that the greatest pleasure in life consists in sexual intercourse, and that therefore one must secure that happiness in the pleasantest way.
Yet more striking is this immoral relation to life in the half-novel, Yvette. The subject, which is horrible in its immorality, is as follows: A charming girl, innocent in soul and depraved only in the manners she has learned in her mother’s dissolute circle, leads a libertine into error. He falls in love with her, but imagining that this girl knowingly chatters the obscene nonsense she has picked up in her mother’s society and repeats parrot-like without understanding — imagining that she is already depraved — he coarsely offers her an immoral union. 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,
