GUY DE MAUPASSANT (1850–1893) IS ONE OF THE MOST WELL-RESPECTED writers of French literature, as well as one of the most prolific. In his short lifetime, he wrote some three hundred short stories and six novels. Along with his mentor, Gustave Flaubert, Maupassant is considered one of the progenitors of the modern short story, having influenced the likes of Chekhov and Maugham, Babel and O’Henry. Studied and appreciated by every French-speaking student and scholar, Maupassant has not, however, been fully acknowledged for his genius by modern English readers, as the majority of the existing translations of his stories are extremely dated.
The translation of any classic work automatically results in a debate that fascinates translators and critics alike: do we respect the established language, structure, and punctuation of the original text or do we update these elements to lessen the perceived distance between the work and a modern audience? Is it a requirement of a “good” translation to respect the original punctuation, even if punctuation is used differently in the two languages involved? Is it “permissible” to modernize the language of earlier centuries when we translate, or is that “sacrilege”?
In this collection, I decided along with my Liveright editor, Robert Weil, to update Maupassant’s nineteenth-century style so that modern readers could fully appreciate him as a master of the short story genre. Modernizing language does not mean that certain elements from the original are necessarily lost. It does, however, pose very particular challenges to the translator. It is necessary to be sensitive to the poetic elements employed by an author—assonance, alliteration, lyricism, imagery, etc.—yet at the same time explore parallels in a modern idiom.
As Ollie Brock, the acclaimed British translator, wrote:
Our standards for translations usually conceal an impossible demand. We want a clone of the original, only made of different stuff. . . .
Imagine trying to cook the same meal twice with different ingredients. You wouldn’t manage it . . . If we could get away from our reverence for the holy “original,” we might be freer to enjoy the work of translators. In music, it is perfectly acceptable to arrange a previously written piece for a new instrument or ensemble. When Franz Liszt transcribed a Beethoven concerto for solo piano, no one was about to complain that they couldn’t hear the violins. He was writing for the piano. In the days before recording, new arrangements of orchestral works had a practical purpose, too: to make them manageable for a salon quartet or accessible to those who lived far from the concert halls. Rather like translators, arrangers were adapting works in order to widen their audiences.1
Literal word-for-word translations rarely work. It is essential to find emotional equivalents to create the atmosphere of a text so that the reader is transported to a different time and place. I have chosen to do this partly by keeping the titles, names of characters, place names, and so on in French, adding brief explanatory footnotes when necessary. But a reader must also be able to savor being immersed in that other time and place without feeling bewildered, a stranger in a foreign land. Translation is so important because it allows us to discover and understand other worlds, cultures divided both by time and geography that we might never have access to otherwise.
The stories in this collection were chosen to represent three of Maupassant’s predominant interests: nineteenth-century French life; the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 and its devastating indelible effects on French society; and the supernatural, a realm that fascinated Maupassant greatly. Each story within these three parts functions as both a historical document and an embodiment of universal, timeless emotions. Each section—Tales of French Life, Tales of War, and Tales of the Supernatural—is preceded by a brief commentary to provide background information to help the reader appreciate the context, while also furnishing details of Maupassant’s life and how his experiences are reflected in his writing.
It was, of course, extremely difficult to decide which tales to include in The Necklace and Other Tales, given that Maupassant wrote over three hundred during his all-too-brief lifetime. I have therefore tried to include some of his most famous stories as well as some that are not as well known, but illustrate his mastery of the genre. While each story is obviously different, stylistic elements recur like leitmotifs in all of them—elements that contributed not only to Maupassant’s reputation as a master of the short story but also to the very definition of what a modern short story is.
A younger protégé of Gustave Flaubert,2 who had risen to international prominence if not notoriety in the 1850s, Maupassant adopted much of his mentor’s modernistic style. Flaubert, who is mainly famous for his novels, was among the first to incorporate so many innovative elements in his writing that James Joyce acknowledged him as an influence, a precursor to “stream of consciousness.” In fact, it is almost impossible to read some stories in Dubliners without sensing a certain stylistic kinship between early Joyce and Maupassant. Readers of The Necklace and Other Stories will also note an unusual use of punctuation, the contrast between very long, flowing sentences and paragraphs and very short factual ones, and the technique known as “free indirect speech,” where we feel we are hearing a character’s thoughts. In post-twentieth-century literature these elements are very common, but in the twilight of the nineteenth century they were very new indeed.
Maupassant’s narrative structure also challenged the conventional forms of his day. He treats us, for example, to many twists in plot and surprise endings. His stories frequently leave us with a moral lesson, often achieved by brief aphorisms, in The Necklace, for example: “How little it takes to make us or break us!”
Maupassant displays great skill and humor in replicating some of his characters’ varying accents and dialects, which is another great challenge to a translator. Stylistically, this is extremely important, for the contrast between satirical, humorous language and a serious theme provides a delicate balance that is often the basis for empathy and irony.
The most challenging element of translation, however, is how to deal with puns and plays on words. In fact, it is sometimes totally impossible. In such cases, I have provided brief footnotes to explain the meaning and context for anyone who does not read French. In Boule de suif, one of Maupassant’s most famous novellas, the title character’s name literally translates as “Ball of Fat” or “Ball of Suet”; but she is described as voluptuous, and food plays an important part in the tale, so I have chosen to call her “Butterball.” There again, Maupassant’s play on words and his choice of names provide humor and create empathy.
Yet another significant stylistic element is the author’s use of a framework in which many of the stories are told by one person to another, or else directly, in the first person, to the reader. His most famous supernatural tale, Le Horla, is written in the form of a diary. In this way, Maupassant reinforces the idea that the genre originates from an oral tradition in which people told each other stories long before any were written down to be read.
It is my hope that the stories in The Necklace and Other Stories will reintroduce Maupassant’s great talent to a modern audience: he is an author who deserves to be rediscovered.
—Sandra Smith
New York, 2014
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1 “Translators Shouldn’t Be Slaves to the Holy ‘Original,’ ” The New Statesman, September 5, 2012.
2 Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) is best known for his novel Madame Bovary, but he also wrote a collection of three tales, Trois Contes, experimenting with various approaches to the short story genre.