MAUPASSANTとMAUGHAM

抄録

1. In his novel, Liza of Lambeth, Maugham did his best to be objective, and succeeded in keeping himself entirely out of his work. It is through the influence of the French writer that he succeeded in doing, so at so early an age. 2. There is something in common between Le Roman, Maupassant's essay on the novel, and Maughan's preface to Altogether. Both agree that a writer must be privileged to select materials according to his plan and even to distort facts to his advantage. Most of their stories are too well constructed, dramatic and have surprise endings. 3. Both avoided psychological description, limiting themselves to placing before our eyes personages and events. Maughams, though he was not blind to the defects of the method of Maupassant, preferred to express character by action, not by description. 4. Maupassant was the lineal descendant of the French conteurs of old, and he was in his element when he wrote a series of light tales free from the grave influence of Flaubert. These are .characterised by the writer's good humour, lightness of touch, vivacity, wit and grace. Maugham, in some of his stories, seems to have tried to Write-in this manner but without success. 5. Maupassant considered L'Inutile Beaute the best of his work and Maugham selects Red as his best story. Here again the former's cynicism and the latter's sentimentality show that are in their respective traditions. 6. Despite the pessimism and misanthropy underlying much of the work, Maupassant's stories give us the impression that he produced them quite easily and naturally, Probably, as Ceard said in him, literature was a matter wholly of instinct not of reflection. With Maugham the process of creation is rather a long one, from the birth of an idea to its maturity, and he seems to have constructed his story by a distinctly intellectual process. It is interesting that these two writers, differing so widely in their accomplishments and experiences from each other, came to hold nearly the same view that life is insignificant and that men are base, and wrote stories that have many similarities between them.