It is a funny thing, the enduring elements of literature. What remains relevant and what loses its immediacy to obscurity is often separated by finely drawn nuances. Certainly in this collection, the potently pertinent and the disappointingly antique are inextricably intermingled. De Maupassant apparently invented the modern concept of the short story, and many of those featured in this book display a universal sensibility.
"The Necklace" follows a young woman who belongs to the middle class but believes she deserves better. She borrows a rich friend's necklace and loses it, then buys a replacement on credit, and works for a decade to pay off the debt, only to discover the original was only worth a fraction of the one she bought. Thus, a woman whose previous aspirations were meaningless, works for years for something equally meaningless. The uppity upstart gets what she deserves.
A melancholy narrative tells of the stifled, uncontrollable affections of a middle-aged spinster- the tragedy of her existence, and her tragic end. An uncomfortable horror story of sorts chronicles the deterioration of a man haunted by an invisible being. Here we begin to find bits of antiquity. The story makes all sorts of "metaphysical speculations" that could only have been made in the nineteenth century.
Other stories focus on Franco-Prussian conflicts, peasant life, and prostitutes, the profundity of which is entirely lost on me. What someone hailed as technically the greatest short story ever written, "Boule-de-Suif," or "Ball of Fat," had no special merits that I could see. A rotund prostitute refuses to sleep with the occupying Prussian captain, but her compatriots, desperate to escape, convince her to override her patriotic scruples. The end finds them on a departing wagon, the prostitute, now shunned by all, weeping. I failed to sympathize with the protagonist. But from what I understand, de Maupassant was obsessed with prostitutes, and seeing how as he died from syphilis, he evidently had a deep sympathy for them.
Incidentally, de Maupassant seems to have actually gone crazy from the disease. He was committed to an asylum, and he died there. A fascinating end for an author, I must say.
Some of the stories really dragged, while others kept me going with a sort of morbid fascination. I do not believe a single story had a redeeming ending, but of course, that is too much to ask. I must merely content myself with a superb command of language and an emerging sense of irony.
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