Master storyteller Guy De Maupassant covered the full range in his short fiction, by turns as realist as Balzac, as romantic as Dumas, as naturalist as Zola, as decadent as Lorrain or as Gothic as Poe. What a powerful, versatile imagination. This collection of short stories includes three well-known classics – Boule De Suif, The Piece of String, Madame Tellier’s Establishment – but I will focus on four very short tales that, by telling detail and the author’s grasp of the nuances of psychology, capture the human heart.

A Vendetta
In a tiny Italian fishing cottage built on a mountainside overlooking the sea, a widow lives alone with her adult son and dog named Frisky. But one night tragedy strikes: after a quarrel, the victim of underhandedness and betrayal, her son, Antoine, is knifed by one Nicolas Ravolati, who escapes back across the sea to Sardinia. After the son’s body is brought back to the cottage, the old grieving widow sits next to howling, grieving Frisky and then bends over the body and says, “Don’t worry my boy, my poor child, I will avenge you. Do you hear me? It’s your mother’s promise, and your mother always keeps her word, you know that.” In the days that follow, looking out at sea in the direction of Sardinia, she can discern the white spec that is the home town of Nicolas Ravolati. But what can she, so old and so weak, possibly do to avenge her son? Then, ah, Maupassant, you clever master! We read: “One night, as Frisky began to howl, the mother has a sudden inspiration, the fierce vindictive inspiration of a savage.” What unfolds is simply unforgettable. Thanks, Guy. Frisky, love that dog’s name.

The Model
How deep is our love; how extreme our emotions: what moves us to sacrifice our lives; why would we be willing to destroy everything in a fit of passion? A short tale of love, obsession, remorse and more love. This Maupassant story of a painter and his wife reminds me of how we as humans can develop our minds to be super-sharp, our bodies to be incredibly strong and flexible, but what about the emotions? Curiously enough, the emotions play such a major role, enough to keep us and the world spinning round and round and round.

Two Friends
How to articulate the close bond of friendship amid the stupidity of war, the warm blood of humanity amid the cold blood of inhumanity? Maupassant captures the human, all too human in this tale of two Parisians, French to their marrow, as they decide, after a few drinks, to brave the chances of encountering Prussian soldiers in order to relive the simple pleasure of fishing they both enjoyed out in the countryside prior to the war. The artistry of every single touch of character, bit of dialogue and unfolding of events is a stroke of storytelling genius.

The Minuet
During a discussion amid friends, an elderly bachelor who stepped over many a dead body during his years of military service and witnessed multiple additional tragedies in his long life, spoke up: “The crude violence of nature or man may bring cries of horror or indignation to our lips, but it does not wring the heart or send the shiver down the spine, as does the sight of certain heart-rending, though trivial incidents. . . . Suddenly there opens before us a chink of that mysterious door leading to the intricate maze of the subconscious mind with its incurable misery, the more deep-seated because apparently not acute, the more agonizing because apparently indefinable, the more enduring because apparently imaginary; these persists in the soul as it were a trail of sadness, an after-taste of bitterness, a feeling of disillusion, which it takes years to dispel.”

The old bachelor then goes on to relay an experience he had many years ago at the Luxembourg garden in Paris whilst a young law student, when he would frequently visit this grand old 18th century-style garden in his leisure hours and indulge in dreamy philosophical musings. On a few such outing, he noticed there was another person, an oddly dressed little old gentlemen who also frequented the garden. On those occasions when the two of them had a chance encounter, they exchanged pleasantries but then the bachelor observed something peculiar: “Suddenly one morning, thinking himself quite alone, he began making strange movements; first a few little jumps, then a bow, then he executed an entrechant, which still showed agility in spite of his spindly legs; then he began a graceful pirouette, hopping and jigging up and down in the oddest way, smiling to an imaginary audience, bowing with his hand on his heart, contorting his poor old body like a marionette, waving pathetically ridiculous greetings to the empty air. He was dancing!” What happens in a future meeting with this odd gentlemen burns a hole deep in the old bachelor’s memory. As our bachelor wryly observes, such is the irrationality of life.
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Master storyteller Guy De Maupassant covered the full range in his short fiction, by turns as realist as Balzac, as romantic as Dumas, as naturalist as Zola, as decadent as Lorrain or as Gothic as Poe. What a powerful, versatile imagination. This collection of short stories includes three well-known classics – Boule De Suif, The Piece of String, Madame Tellier’s Establishment – but I will focus on four very short tales that, by telling detail and the author’s grasp of the nuances of psychology, capture the human heart.

A Vendetta
In a tiny Italian fishing cottage built on a mountainside overlooking the sea, a widow lives alone with her adult son and dog named Frisky. But one night tragedy strikes: after a quarrel, the victim of underhandedness and betrayal, her son, Antoine, is knifed by one Nicolas Ravolati, who escapes back across the sea to Sardinia. After the son’s body is brought back to the cottage, the old grieving widow sits next to howling, grieving Frisky and then bends over the body and says, “Don’t worry my boy, my poor child, I will avenge you. Do you hear me? It’s your mother’s promise, and your mother always keeps her word, you know that.” In the days that follow, looking out at sea in the direction of Sardinia, she can discern the white spec that is the home town of Nicolas Ravolati. But what can she, so old and so weak, possibly do to avenge her son? Then, ah, Maupassant, you clever master! We read: “One night, as Frisky began to howl, the mother has a sudden inspiration, the fierce vindictive inspiration of a savage.” What unfolds is simply unforgettable. Thanks, Guy. Frisky, love that dog’s name.

The Model
How deep is our love; how extreme our emotions: what moves us to sacrifice our lives; why would we be willing to destroy everything in a fit of passion? A short tale of love, obsession, remorse and more love. This Maupassant story of a painter and his wife reminds me of how we as humans can develop our minds to be super-sharp, our bodies to be incredibly strong and flexible, but what about the emotions? Curiously enough, the emotions play such a major role, enough to keep us and the world spinning round and round and round.

Two Friends
How to articulate the close bond of friendship amid the stupidity of war, the warm blood of humanity amid the cold blood of inhumanity? Maupassant captures the human, all too human in this tale of two Parisians, French to their marrow, as they decide, after a few drinks, to brave the chances of encountering Prussian soldiers in order to relive the simple pleasure of fishing they both enjoyed out in the countryside prior to the war. The artistry of every single touch of character, bit of dialogue and unfolding of events is a stroke of storytelling genius.

The Minuet
During a discussion amid friends, an elderly bachelor who stepped over many a dead body during his years of military service and witnessed multiple additional tragedies in his long life, spoke up: “The crude violence of nature or man may bring cries of horror or indignation to our lips, but it does not wring the heart or send the shiver down the spine, as does the sight of certain heart-rending, though trivial incidents. . . . Suddenly there opens before us a chink of that mysterious door leading to the intricate maze of the subconscious mind with its incurable misery, the more deep-seated because apparently not acute, the more agonizing because apparently indefinable, the more enduring because apparently imaginary; these persists in the soul as it were a trail of sadness, an after-taste of bitterness, a feeling of disillusion, which it takes years to dispel.”

The old bachelor then goes on to relay an experience he had many years ago at the Luxembourg garden in Paris whilst a young law student, when he would frequently visit this grand old 18th century-style garden in his leisure hours and indulge in dreamy philosophical musings. On a few such outing, he noticed there was another person, an oddly dressed little old gentlemen who also frequented the garden. On those occasions when the two of them had a chance encounter, they exchanged pleasantries but then the bachelor observed something peculiar: “Suddenly one morning, thinking himself quite alone, he began making strange movements; first a few little jumps, then a bow, then he executed an entrechant, which still showed agility in spite of his spindly legs; then he began a graceful pirouette, hopping and jigging up and down in the oddest way, smiling to an imaginary audience, bowing with his hand on his heart, contorting his poor old body like a marionette, waving pathetically ridiculous greetings to the empty air. He was dancing!” What happens in a future meeting with this odd gentlemen burns a hole deep in the old bachelor’s memory. As our bachelor wryly observes, such is the irrationality of life.
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