Maupassant and Schopenhauer

Anybody who has read the often cruel, dire short stories by Maupassant will be easily convinced that he was an adept of Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy. Maupassant described people in France at the end of the 19th century as greedy, cowardly, corrupt or plain stupid. Referring to an earlier blog about pink vs black vision of life, I would like to remind you that Schopenhauer and Maupassant are right according to that theory. But am personally still looking to buy a pair of pink glasses if you can recommend a source. Interestingly the most pessimistic writers in the 20th century have to be the Italians: Vega, Pirandello as well as the film directors of Italian realism, Dino De Risi being the most ferocious. Their vision of humanity is even starker than that of Maupassant, without such redeeming figures as the prostitute in "Boule de Suif" offering to share her lunch with the bourgeois who are snobbing her on a stagecoach trip.

Above: The
Innocents,
by Honoré Daumier

On the
right:
Being
tired, by Walter
Gramatté.

Here's the end of one of Maupassant's short story, should we say, sardonic?

"Schopenhauer had just died, and it was arranged that we should watch, in turn, two by two, till morning.He was lying in a large apartment, very simple, vast and gloomy. Two wax candles were burning on the stand by the bedside. It was midnight when I went on watch, together with one of our comrades. The two friends whom we replaced had left the apartment, and we came and sat down at the foot of the bed.

The face was not changed. It was laughing. That pucker which we knew so well lingered still around the corners of the lips, and it seemed to us that he was about to open his eyes, to move and to speak. His thought, or rather his thoughts, enveloped us. We felt ourselves more than ever in the atmosphere of his genius, absorbed, possessed by him. His domination seemed to be even more sovereign now that he was dead. A feeling of mystery was blended with the power of this incomparable spirit.

The bodies of these men disappear, but they themselves remain; and in the night which follows the cessation of their heart's pulsation I assure you, monsieur, they are terrifying.

And in hushed tones we talked about him, recalling to mind certain sayings, certain formulas of his, those startling maxims which are like jets of flame flung, in a few words, into the darkness of the Unknown Life.

"'It seems to me that he is going to speak,' said my comrade. And we stared with uneasiness bordering on fear at the motionless face, with its eternal laugh. Gradually, we began to feel ill at ease, oppressed, on the point of fainting. I faltered:

"I don't know what is the matter with me, but, I assure you I am not well.'

And at that moment we noticed that there was an unpleasant odor from the corpse. Then, my comrade suggested that we should go into the adjoining room, and leave the door open; and I assented to his proposal. I took one of the wax candles which burned on the stand, and I left the second behind. Then we went and sat down at the other end of the adjoining apartment, in such a position that we could see the bed and the corpse, clearly revealed by the light.

But he still held possession of us. One would have said that his immaterial essence, liberated, free, all-powerful and dominating, was flitting around us. And sometimes, too, the dreadful odor of the decomposed body came toward us and penetrated us, sickening and indefinable. Suddenly a shiver passed through our bones: a sound, a slight sound, came from the death-chamber. Immediately we fixed our glances on him, and we saw, yes, monsieur, we saw distinctly, both of us, something white pass across the bed, fall on the carpet, and vanish under an armchair. We were on our feet before we had time to think of anything, distracted by stupefying terror, ready to run away. Then we stared at each other. We were horribly pale. Our hearts throbbed fiercely enough to have raised the clothing on our chests. I was the first to speak:

"'Did you see?'

"'Yes, I saw.'

"'Can it be that he is not dead?'

"'Why, when the body is putrefying?'

"'What are we to do?'

"My companion said in a hesitating tone:

"'We must go and look.'

I took our wax candle and entered first, glancing into all the dark corners in the large apartment. Nothing was moving now, and I approached the bed. But I stood transfixed with stupor and fright: Schopenhauer was no longer laughing! He was grinning in a horrible fashion, with his lips pressed together and deep hollows in his cheeks. I stammered out:

"'He is not dead!'

But the terrible odor ascended to my nose and stifled me. And I no longer moved, but kept staring fixedly at him, terrified as if in the presence of an apparition. Then my companion, having seized the other wax candle, bent forward. Next, he touched my arm without uttering a word. I followed his glance, and saw on the ground, under the armchair by the side of the bed, standing out white on the dark carpet, and open as if to bite, Schopenhauer's set of artificial teeth.

The work of decomposition, loosening the jaws, had made it jump out of the mouth.

From "Beside Schopenhauer's Corpse"

contributed by -- Arabella Hutter