Nineteenth century French author Guy de Maupassant was a pioneer and master of the short story. My guess is anybody reading this review is familiar with the author’s classic tale The Diamond Necklace from high school.
Maupassant once said a good writer should aim to show true human nature in his work, the unexceptional and the everyday of people’s lives and their characters, “their feelings and passions; how people love or hate each other, how they fight each other and how they make up.”
Maupassant followed his own advice as this description fits his stories like a fine leather French glove. Even the famous German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed Maupassant to be a brilliant and delicate psychologist.
The Duel is a five-page master stroke of fiction. The events of the story are simple and clear enough: At the end of the Franco-Prussian war, a fat middle-aged Frenchman travels from Paris by train to join his wife and daughter in Switzerland. He shares a compartment with two fat Englishmen. At a little town, a Prussian officer enters the compartment, joins the Englishmen’s conversation and starts bragging about his killing Frenchmen and goes on to say that if he was in charge he would have burned Paris to the ground and killed every man, woman and child in France.
The sequence of events within the story are one thing but how the details of the characters and events are presented are quite another. This is where Maupassant is a master. For example, when the Prussian officer climbs the steps to enter the compartment, he does so with "much clanking of his sword." We are not surprised when he quickly starts boasting and bragging about killing Frenchmen.
I wouldn’t want to say anything more specific and possibly spoil anybody’s experience of reading, so I will turn to a general observations about one of the author’s themes: national pride. Here is what nineteenth century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer has to say on the subject: “The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”
Schopenhauer’s words have a ring of truth but Maupassant knew there are those occasions in life when we are pushed in a corner and are forced to act and react. Indeed, living in a world with people of all nationalities and cultural backgrounds, encountering conflict, confrontation and interpersonal challenges is inevitable. One can imagine how the French cheered for the story’s main character at the time when the story was published and probably still cheer today.
And what did Maupassant think, in turn, of Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy urging us to stand apart and above the turmoil of everyday passions, worldly aspirations, romantic love, and yearnings of the heart? The French author penned a penetrating tale entitled At the Death Bed of Schopenhauer relaying what happened to a couple of students who sat at Schopenhauer’s death bed, a tale of black humor with a trace of mockery of those who would disdain life and the common people he wrote about with such tenderness and compassion in his short stories.
Guy de Maupassant
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On the topic of duels, here's a micro-fiction I wrote 25 years ago -
THE DUEL
I've been challenged to a duel. What lead up to this duel, who knows. All I know is the musket case is open and, for some reason, we're all attired - top hats, capes, the whole works - like gentlemen out of Balzac or Dostoevsky.
What's this all about? I'm commanded to choose my weapon. I stand back to back with my capped gentlemanly opponent. We're told to count ten paces, turn, and fire. My opponents looks like such an interesting fellow, I'd really prefer to have a nice chat with him rather than shoot him.
I count my ten paces, turn, and fire my musket. I hear a whizzing over my head. My opponent's knees buckle, he he falls flat on his face.
"Good show, sir!" my double shouts.
Good show, indeed. Now is my big chance to ask what this duel was all about.
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