The Necklace and Other Stories: Maupassant for Modern Times

by Guy de Maupassant, Sandra Smith (Translator)

Overview

In a “lively, sparkling, and sharp-edged” (Arthur Goldhammer) new translation, Guy de Maupassant’s most beloved works are reintroduced to twenty-first-century readers.

A Parisian civil servant turned protégé of Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant is considered not only one of the greatest short story writers in all of French literature but also a pioneer of psychological realism and modernism who helped define the form. Credited with influencing the likes of Chekhov, Maugham, Babel, and O. Henry, Maupassant had, at the time of his death at the age of forty-two, written six novels and some three hundred short stories. Yet in English, Maupassant has, curiously, remained unappreciated by modern readers due to outdated translations that render his prose in an archaic, literal style.

In this bold new translation, Sandra Smith—the celebrated translator of Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise—brings us twenty-eight of Maupassant's essential stories and two novellas in lyrical yet accessible language that brings Maupassant into vibrant English. In addition to her sparkling translation, Smith also imposes a structure that captures the full range of Maupassant's work. Dividing the collection into three sections that reflect his predominant themes—nineteenth-century French society, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, and the supernatural—Smith creates "an arrangement suggesting a culture of relation, of structure, of completion" (Richard Howard).

In "Tales of French Life," we see Maupassant explore the broad swath of French society, not just examining the lives of the affluent as was customary for writers in his day. In the title story of the collection, "The Necklace," Maupassant crafts a devastating portrait of misplaced ambition and ruin in the emerging middle class.

The stories in "Tales of War" emerge from Maupassant’s own experiences in the devastating Franco-Prussian War and create a portrait of that disastrous conflict that few modern readers have ever encountered. This section features Maupassant's most famous novella, "Boule de Suif."

The last section, "Tales of the Supernatural," delves into the occult and the bizarre. While certain critics may attribute some of these stories and morbid fascination as the product of the author's fevered mind and possible hallucinations induced by late-stage syphilis, they echo the gothic horror of Poe as well as anticipate the eerie fiction of H. P. Lovecraft.

The result takes readers from marriage, family, and the quotidian details of life to the disasters of war and nationalism, then to the gothic and beyond, allowing us to appreciate Maupassant in an idiom that matches our own times. The Necklace and Other Stories enables us to appreciate Maupassant as the progenitor of the modern short story and as a writer vastly ahead of his time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631491894
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	07/05/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 5.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Born in Normandy, Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) is the author of over three hundred short stories and six novels, including Bel Ami and Pierre et Jean. He is widely considered to be one of the fathers of the modern short story.

Sandra Smith is the translator of Camus' The Stranger and Irène Nemirovsky's Suite Française, which won her the French American Foundation and Florence Gould Foundation Translation prize and the PEN/Book-of-the-Month-Club Translation Prize. She lives in New York.

Table of Contents

Translator's Introduction vii

Talks of French Life

The Necklace La Parure 5

My Uncle Jules Mon Oncle Jules 15

The Protector Le Protecteur 23

The Journey Le Voyage 29

Mademoiselle Pearl Mademoiselle Pearl 36

The Umbrella Le Parapluie 53

On Horseback A Cheval 62

The Baptism Le Baptême 70

In the Countryside Aux Champs 75

Adieu Adieu 82

A Day in the Country Une Partie de Campagne 87

The Question of Latin La Question du Latin 100

Tales of War 109

Mademoiselle Fifi Mademoiselle Fifi 113

The Madwoman La Folle 127

Lieutenant Laré's Marriage Le Mariage du Lieutenant Loré 131

Two Friends Deux Amis 136

Père Milon Le Père Milon 144

The Adventure of Walter Schnaffs L'Aventure de Walter Schnaffs 151

La Mère Sauvage La Mère Sauvage 160

The Prisoners Les Prisonniers 168

A Duel Un Duel 180

Boule de Suif Boute de Suif-Novella 186

Tales of the Supernatural 227

On the Water Sur l'eau 231

Fear La Peur 238

The Apparition L'Apparition 245

The Hand La Main 253

Lost at Sea Le Noyé 260

Who Can Know? Qui sait? 268

A Nightmare La Nuit: Un Cauchemar 282

Le Horla Le Horla- Novella 288

Guy De Maupassant: A Chronology

Editorial Reviews

"Sandra Smith's new translation gives us a Maupassant for the twenty-first century: lively, sparkling, and sharp-edged. Smith brings Maupassant out of the museum and makes him our contemporary."

Arthur Goldhammer

"Maupassant may have known more about venality and lust than any writer of his age, and yet he remains an artist of surprising delicacy and extraordinary range. The nightmares of war and of one's own obsessions, the sorrows of marriage and love, the delusions of pride: Sandra Smith's masterful new translations show it all to us, in a language as supple and brisk as the French original itself, and her selection includes many little-known masterpieces alongside some of his most famous tales."

Michael Gorra

"This new translation of Guy de Maupassant's short stories sings. No one has rendered Maupassant's quick, compact, genteel style better than Sandra Smith…Maupassant for Modern Times is a superb introduction to what it must have felt like to live at the end of the nineteenth-century in and around Paris: a must-read alongside the world of Impressionist painting and music, a delightful 'day in the country' without leaving home."

R. Howard Bloch

"It is a great relief to lovers of literature (including, I should imagine, the ghost of Guy de Maupassant) to read Sandra Smith's superb translation of thirty of the three hundred Maupassant stories in an arrangement suggesting a culture of relation, of structure, of completion. It is my hope that this sensitive selection of Maupassant's stories will move readers on to Maupassant's novels, a literary form with not only the tyronic connection of shorter to longer, but the attributes of range, development, and consummation."

Richard Howard

"Sandra Smith has a sterling reputation for shaking the dust off previous translations while leaving the meaning and the feeling of a classic work of literature intact. She has succeeded again with this beloved collection of stories by Maupassant and delivered in English the vitality and excitement his first nineteenth-century French readers appreciated."

Alice Kaplan

★ 05/15/2015
Maupassant (1850–93), a prolific French writer of short stories, is best known for "The Necklace," which appears in this collection along with other famous titles including "Boule de Suif" and "Le Horla." Smith (translator of Irène Némirovsky's Suite Française and Albert Camus's The Stranger) selected 28 stories and two novellas for this compilation. She organized these works into three thematic categories: Tales of French Life, Tales of War, and Tales of the Supernatural. The book also includes a chronology of the author's life. This reviewer perused other English and original French editions to assess Smith's translation and found that she modernizes the language without compromising the integrity of the stories or the time period represented. These translations also contain relevant editorial notes to describe cultural or other references that might not be familiar to contemporary readers. Smith successfully captures Maupassant's depiction of 19th-century French culture using terminology that allows these wonderful texts to reach a fresh generation of readers. VERDICT A solid translation of some wonderful short stories. This title will appeal to a wide audience including readers interested in supernatural tales and in 19th-century French literature and culture.—Erica Swenson Danowitz, Delaware Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Media, PA

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