He has none possibly, or if he has he
does not tell it.

This agrees admirably with the theory of impassivity in literature, so
much in vogue when Maupassant became known. But despite that theory he
is, if one understands him, quite other than

"A being without pity who contemplated suffering."

He has the deepest sympathy for the weak, for the victims of the
deceptions of society, for the sufferings of the obscure. If the
successful adventurer, Lesable, and the handsome Maze are the objects
of his veiled irony, he maintains, or feels a sorrowful, though
somewhat disdainful tenderness, for poor old Savon, the old copying
clerk of the Ministry of Marine, who is the drudge of the office and
whose colleagues laugh at him because his wife deceived him, sans
espoir d'"heritage."

Why did Maupassant at the start win universal favor? It is because he
had direct genius, the clear vision of a "primitive" (an artist of the
pre-Renaissance). His materials were just those of a graduate who,
having left college, has satisfied his curiosity. Grasping the simple
and ingenious, but strong and appropriate tools that he himself has
forged, he starts out in the forest of romance, and instead of being
overcome by the enchantment of its mystery, he walks through it
unfalteringly with a joyful step....

He was a minstrel. Offspring of a race, and not the inheritor of a
formula, he narrated to his contemporaries, bewildered by the lyrical
deformities of romanticism, stories of human beings, simple and
logical, like those which formerly delighted our parents.

The French reader who wished to be amused was at once at home, on the
same footing with him.... More spontaneous than the first troubadours,
he banished from his writings abstract and general types,
"romanticized" life itself, and not myths, those eternal legends that
stray through the highways of the world.

Study closely these minstrels in recent works; read M. Joseph Bédier's
beautiful work, Les Fabliaux, and you will see how, in Maupassant's
prose, ancestors, whom he doubtless never knew, are brought to life.

The Minstrel feels neither anger nor sympathy; he neither censures,
nor moralizes; for the self-satisfied Middle Ages cannot conceive the
possibility of a different world. Brief, quick, he despises aims and
methods, his only object is to entertain his auditors. Amusing and
witty, he cares only for laughter and ridicule....

But Maupassant's stories are singularly different in character. In the
nineteenth century the Gallic intellect had long since foundered amid
vileness and debauchery. In the provinces the ancient humor had
disappeared; one chattered still about nothing, but without point,
without wit; "trifling" was over, as they call it in Champagne. The
nauseating pabulum of the newspapers and low political intrigue had
withered the French intellect, that delicate, rare intellect, the last
traces of which fade away in the Alsatian stories of Erckman-Chatrian,
in the Provençal tales of Alphonse Daudet, in the novels of Emile
Pouvillon. Maupassant is not one of them. He knows nothing about
humor, for he never found it in Life....

His ambition was not to make one laugh; he writes for the pleasure of
recalling, without bias, what, to him, seems a halfway and dangerous
truth.... In his pessimism, Maupassant despises the race, society,
civilization and the world....

If Maupassant draws from anyone it is Schopenhauer and Herbert
Spencer, of whom he often speaks, although one does not know if he
studied them very deeply. In all his books, excepting, of course, in
the case of lines from the great tragic poets, one finds only one
credited reference, which in to Sir John Lubbock's work on ants, an
extract from which is introduced into Yvette.

No one was less bookish than himself. He was a designer, and one of
the greatest in literature. His heroes, little folk, artisans or
rustics, bureaucrats or shopkeepers, prostitutes or rakes, he places
them in faintly colored, but well-defined surroundings. And,
immediately, the simplified landscape gives the keynote of the story.

In his descriptions he resists the temptation of asserting his
personal view. He will not allow himself to see more of his landscape
than his characters themselves see. He is also careful to avoid all
refined terms and expressions, to introduce no element superior to the
characters of his heroes.

He never makes inanimate nature intervene directly in human
tribulations; she laughs at our joys and our sorrows.... Once, only,
in one of his works, the trees join in the universal mourning--the
great, sad beeches weep in autumn for the soul, the little soul, of la
petite Roque.

And yet Maupassant adores this nature, the one thing that moves
him.... But, in spite of this, he can control himself; the artist is
aware of the danger to his narration should he indulge in the
transports of a lover.

With an inborn perception, Maupassant at once seizes on the principal
detail, the essential peculiarity that distinguishes a character and
builds round it. He also, in the presentation of his character,
assumes an authority that no writer, not even Balzac, ever
equalled....

He traces what he sees with rapid strokes. His work is a vast
collection of powerful sketches, synthetic draftings. Like all great
artists, he was a simplifier; he knew how to "sacrifice" like the
Egyptians and Greeks....

Thanks to his rapid methods the master "cinematographed," if I may use
the word, inexhaustible stories. Among them, each person may find
himself represented, the artist, the clerk, the thinker, and the
non-commissioned officer.

Maupassant was always impatient to "realize" his observations. He
might forget, and above all, the flower of the sensation might lose
its perfume. In Une Vie he hastens to sum up his childhood's
recollections. As for Bel Ami, he wrote it from day to day as he
haunted the offices of Editors.

As for his style, it is limpid, accurate, easy and strongly marked,
with a sound framework and having the suppleness of a living organism.

Very industrious and very careful at first, Maupassant, in the fever
of production, became less careful. He early accustomed himself to
composing in his mind. "Composition amuses me," he said, "when I am
thinking it out, and not when I am writing it." ...