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 production.
In this the fundamental difference between the demands of the novel and of the short story is seen. A novel has for its aim, even for external aim, the description of a whole human life or of many human lives, and therefore its writer should have a clear and firm conception of what is good and bad in life, and this Maupassant lacked; indeed according to the theory he held, that is just what should be avoided. Had he been a novelist like some talentless writers of sensual novels, he would, being without talent, have quietly described what was evil as good, and his novels would have had unity, and would have been interesting to people who shared his view. But Maupassant had talent, that is to say, he saw things in their essentials and therefore involuntarily discerned the truth. He involuntarily saw the evil in what he wished to consider good. That is why, in all his novels except the first, his sympathies continually waver, now presenting the evil as good, and now admitting that the evil is evil and the good good, but continually shifting from the one standpoint to the other. And this destroys the very basis of any artistic impression — the framework on which it is built. People of little artistic sensibility often think that a work of art possesses unity when the same people act in it throughout, or when it is all constructed on one plot, or describes the life of one man. That is a mistake. It only appears so to a superficial observer. The cement which binds any artistic production into one whole and therefore produces the illusion of being a reflection of life, is not the unity of persons or situations, but the unity of the author’s independent moral relation to his subject. In reality, when we read or look at the artistic production of a new author the fundamental question that arises in our soul is always of this kind: “Well, what sort of a man are you? Wherein are you different from all the people I know, and what can you tell me that is new, about how we must look at this life of ours?” Whatever the artist depicts — saints, robbers, kings, or lackeys — we seek and see only the artist’s own soul. If he is an established writer with whom we are already familiar, the question no longer is, “What sort of a man are you?” but, “Well, what more can you tell me that is new?” or, “From what new side will you now illumine life for me?” And therefore a writer who has not a clear definite and just view of the universe, and especially a man who considers that this isn’t even wanted, cannot produce a work of art. He may write much and admirably, but a work of art will not result.
So it was with Maupassant in his novels. In his first two novels, and especially in the first, Une Vie, there was a clear, definite, and new relation to life, and it was an artistic production; but as soon as, submitting to the fashionable theory, he decided that this relation of the author to life was quite unnecessary and began to write merely in order faire quelque chose de beau (to produce something beautiful), his novels ceased to be works of art. In Une Vie and Bel-Ami the author knows whom he should love and whom he should hate, and the reader agrees with him and believes in him — believes in the people and events he describes. But in Notre cœur and Yvette the author does not know whom he should love and whom he should hate, and the reader does not know either. And not knowing this, the reader does not believe in the events described and is not interested in them. And therefore, except the two first or, strictly speaking, excepting only the first novel, all Maupassant’s, as novels, are weak; and if he had left us only his novels he would have been merely a striking instance of the way in which brilliant talents may perish as a result of the false environment in which he developed and of these false theories of art that have been devised by people who neither love nor understand it. But fortunately Maupassant wrote short stories in which he did not subject himself to the false theory he had accepted, and wrote not quelque chose de beau, but what touched or revolted his moral feeling. And in these short stories — not in all, but in the best of them — we see how that moral feeling grew in the author.
And it is in this that the wonderful quality of every true artist lies, if only he does not do violence to himself under the influence of a false theory. His talent teaches its possessor and leads him forward along the path of moral development, compelling him to love what deserves love and to hate what deserves hate. An artist is an artist because he sees things not as he wishes to see them but as they really are. The possessor of a talent, the man, may make mistakes, but his talent if only it is allowed free play, as Maupassant gave it free play in his short stories, discloses, undrapes the object, and compels love of it if it deserves love and hatred of it if it deserves hatred. With every true artist, when under the influence of his circle he begins to represent what should not be represented, there happens what happened to Balaam, who, wishing to bless, cursed what should be cursed, and wishing to curse, blessed what should be blessed: involuntarily he does, not what he wishes to do but what he should do. And this happened to Maupassant.
There has hardly been another writer who so sincerely thought that all the good, all the meaning of life, lies in woman — in love, and who with such strength of passion described woman and her love from all sides; and there has hardly ever been a writer who reached such clearness and exactitude in showing all the awful phases of that very thing which had seemed to him the highest and the greatest of life’s blessings. The more he penetrated into the question the more it revealed itself, and the more did the coverings fall from it and only its horrible results and yet more horrible essence remain.
Read of the idiot son, of the night with a daughter (L’ermite), of the sailor with his sister (Le port). Le champ d’oliviers, La petite Roque, of the English girl (Miss
