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  3. Of the French writers of romance of the latter part of the nineteenth centur

Of the French writers of romance of the latter part of the nineteenth centur

游客2023-12-03  24
问题     Of the French writers of romance of the latter part of the nineteenth century no one made a reputation as quickly as did Guy de Maupassant. Not one has preserved that reputation with more ease, not only during life, but in death. None so completely hides his personality in his glory. In an epoch of the utmost publicity, in which the most insignificant deeds of a celebrated man are spied, recorded, and commented on, the author of " Boule de Suif" , of Pierre et Jean, of Notre Coeur, found a way of effacing his personality in his work.
    Of De Maupassant we know that he was born in Normandy: that he was the favorite pupil, if one may so express it, the literary protege, of Gustave Flaubert: that he made his debut with a novel inserted in a small collection, published by Emile Zola and his young friends, under the title: "The Soirees of Medan" : that subsequently he did not fail to publish stories and romances every year up to 1891: and that he finally died in 1893 without having recovered his reason.
    We know, too, that he passionately loved a strenuous physical life and long journeys, particularly long journeys upon the sea. He owned a little sailing yacht, named after one of his books, Bel-Ami, in which he used to sojourn for weeks and months. These meager details are almost the only ones that have been gathered as food for the curiosity of the public.
    I leave the legendary side, which is always in evidence in the case of a celebrated man — that gossip, for example, which avers that Maupassant was a high liver and a worldling. The very number of his volumes is a protest to the contrary. One could not write so large a number of pages in so small a number of years without the virtue of industry, a virtue incompatible with habits of dissipation. This does not mean that the writer of these great romances had no love for pleasure and had not tasted the world, but that for him these were secondary things. The psychology of his work ought, then, to find an interpretation other than that afforded by wholly false or exaggerated anecdotes.
    And first, what does that anxiety to conceal his personality prove, carried as it was to such an extreme degree? The answer rises spontaneously in the minds of those who have studied closely the history of literature. The absolute silence about himself, preserved by one whose position among us was that of a Tourgenief, or of a Merimee, and of a Moliere or a Shakespeare among the classic great, reveals, to a person of instinct, a nervous sensibility of extreme depth. There are many chances for an artist of his kind, however timid, or for one who has some grief, to show the depth of his emotion. To take up again only two of the names just cited, this was the case with the author of Terres Vierges, and with the writer of Colomba.
    A somewhat minute analysis of the novels and romances of Maupassant would suffice to demonstrate, even if we did not know the nature of the incidents which prompted them, that he also suffered from an excess of nervous emotionalism. His imagination aims to represent the human being as imprisoned in a situation at once insupportable and inevitable. The spell of this grief and trouble exerts such a power upon the writer that he ends stories commenced in pleasantry with some sinister drama.
    This is the leading trait in the literary physiognomy of Maupassant, as it is the leading and most profound trait in the psychology of his work, viz, that human life is a snare laid by nature, where joy is always changed to misery, where noble words and the highest professions of faith serve the lowest plans and the most cruel egoism, where chagrin, crime, and folly are forever on hand to pursue implacably our hopes, nullify our virtues, and annihilate our wisdom.
    Maupassant has been called a literary nihilist — but in him nihilism finds itself coexistent with an animal energy so fresh and so intense that for a long time it deceives the closest observer. In an eloquent discourse, pronounced over his premature grave, Emile Zola well defined this illusion: " We congratulated him," said he, " upon that health which seemed unbreakable, and justly credited him with the soundest constitution of our band, as well as with the clearest mind and the sanest reason. It was then that this frightful thunderbolt destroyed him."
    It is not exact to say that the lofty genius of De Maupassant was that of an absolutely sane man. We comprehend it today, and, on re-reading him, we find traces everywhere of his final malady. But it is exact to say that this wounded genius was, by a singular circumstance, the genius of a robust man. A physiologist would without doubt explain this anomaly by the coexistence of a nervous lesion, light at first, with a muscular, athletic temperament. Whatever the cause, the effect is undeniable. The skilled and dainty pessimism of De Maupassant was accompanied by a vigor and physique very unusual. His sensations are in turn those of a hunter and of a sailor, who have, as the old French saying expressively puts it, "swift foot, eagle eye" , and who are attuned to all the whisperings of nature. [br] Throughout the passage, Maupassant seems to be all the following EXCEPT______.
选项 A、reputable
B、robust
C、defiant
D、exceptionally creative
答案 C
解析 细节题。A选项在第一段第一句no onemade a reputation as quickly as did Guy deMaupassant中提到，B选项在最末段thegenius of a robust man中提到，C选项全文没有提及，D选项对应文中讲到的莫泊桑的genius，故只有C不符合。
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