Maupassant, Guy de

(1850-1893)

   writer

   Considered one of the masters of the art of the short story, Guy de Maupassant was born in Château de Miromesnil, Seine-Maritime. After a happy and carefree youth, interrupted by the franco-prussian war, he took a job as a functionary in Paris (some of the bureaucrats with whom he worked can be found in "La Parure," ["The Necklace"] and "L'Heritage" ["The Inheritance"]). Along with leading a fun-loving and sporting life, he did his literary "apprenticeship" with gustave flaubert, a friend of the family who introduced him to the realist genre and to such writers as joris-karl huysmans, Alphonse daudet, and émile Zola. "Boule-de-Suif" ("Ball of Fat"; 1880), one of the stories in the collection Les Soirées de Médan, decided Maupassant's vocation and assured his success. Devoted to his work, he wrote 300 short stories in 10 years. Evoking in turn Normandy, the franco-prussian war, and Parisian cynicism, these stories range from the classic to the comic, from realism to the fantastic. Full of sensual vitality (Bel ami, 1885), Maupassant visited Great Britain, Italy, and North Africa (Au soleil, 1884; Sur l'eau, 1888) on his yacht, but he was progressively suffering from nervous disorders and haunted by death, as is apparent in his works Une Vie (1883), Pierre et Jean (1888), Fort comme la Mort (1889). Suffering from hallucinations, he was eventually hospitalized and, after 18 months, died in a clinic. Whether he speaks in the colorful Norman patois of his peasants or describes with lucid precision his sense of anguish, Maupassant is the master of the short story.