"Life can't be as good as you think, but it can't be as bad as you think. People's vulnerability and strength are beyond their imagination. Sometimes, I may be so fragile that I cry with a single word, and sometimes I find myself gritting my teeth and walking a long way. ”
- Maupassant's "Life"
Maupassant, Chekhov and O'Henry are known as the kings of the world's three great novels.
His "Taélie Mansion" was written in 1881 and is about the sadness and cuteness of the women in the French countryside. The same theme reminds me of Han Bangqing's novel "The Legend of flowers on the sea" published in the Qing Dynasty in 1894, mr. Lu Xun saw it, translated into the vernacular by Zhang Ailing, and director Hou Xiaoxian of Taiwan made a movie, which is a tragedy starring Liang Chaowei, Liu Jialing, Li Jiaxin, Yi Nengjing and so on.
In Maupassant's Countryside of Normandy, France, opening brothels is no different from opening hat shops and underwear stores, as it is written in the novel, and the peasants say, "It's a good trade, for them to open a girls' boarding school." ”
Interestingly, China and France in the same era were strikingly similar in terms of industry naming: in rural France, brothels were called mansions. In the Qing Dynasty, "Sea Flowers" was a legal high-level place called Changsan Shuyu.
Perhaps it was the rational legalization of the qinglou in various countries around the world more than 100 years ago, and novelists can spy more humanity with the help of this industry that has disappeared with the development of the times. One is a girl on the first and second floor of the normandy countryside in France, and the other is Mr. Changsan Shuyu and a man from Shanghai in the Qing Dynasty. The same hierarchy of the same industry, torn apart are different masks, different human beings.
The Sea Flower of the Qing Dynasty tells the story of the sadness and joy of several girls with personality characteristics who are trapped in life. Maupassant's penmanship is special, his story and lens are focused on the founder and CEO of the mansion, a widowed, tall, fat and pleasing wife who makes guests salivate. Mrs. Sober is also good at reconciling the interpersonal conflicts and relationships between sex workers and guests in the Qinglou.
From this perspective, Maupassant's "Terry's Mansion", much like a novel written by Nobel laureate Llosa, Captain Pandarion and the Girl of the Labor Army, focuses on the supreme leader of the sex worker, and glimpses the absurdity, ridiculousness and helplessness of the times through key figures.
The captain and the laborer girl written by Llosa are devious, jumpy, and even use documentary reports as the main turning point of the novel. And Maupassant's "Terry's Mansion" is as Maugham commented: "He is very good at describing how a scene feels, how it smells, and what kind of impression it makes." The story is interesting and tangled. ”
I felt relaxed when I read it, not like reading Llosa's novels, they seem to use 2 satirical modes to tear the mask of humanity. Maupassant's satire of human nature began with the posting of notices in the mansion "Go to the church and suspend business": the former mayor, the timber merchant Pran, the shipowner Dewell, the English sailor and the French sailor, the salted fish pickler, the banker's son, the insurance agent and the judge, appeared one after another, either pretending to hang out, or knocking on the door, or boldly throwing stones, or whispering to spy on the truth of the closure of the mansion.
Unlike the satire of the lives of all walks of life in the French countryside, Maupassant in his novels gives the high moments of humanity to his wife and her girls. The sex workers in the church were dressed in exaggerated and out of place, but their cries made the church people's heads seem to be shrouded in something supernatural, an omnipresent soul, the magical breath of an invisible omnipotent.
This scene of contradiction and conflict together reminds me of Harold's assessment in Short Stories and The Novelist: "Maupassant is so funny. This Normandy story has warmth, laughter, wonder, and even some kind of spiritual insight. The euphoria of the Coming of the Holy Spirit burning in the congregation is as real as the weeping of the prostitutes who provoked this ecstasy. The color of the story is not obscene, and its spirit is Shakespearean; it expands life without detracting from anyone. ”
Whether it is the Qing Dynasty's "Sea Flowers" or Maupassant's "Terry's Mansion", or Llosa's LaborErress, they all depict the breadth and depth of social life at that time. The lens of the novel focuses on their spiritual world, through thousands of human natures, it seems to speak helplessly for them, or perhaps in the hope of removing some prejudices against this profession. Writers also want to give us a more comprehensive, vivid, and convincing picture than reality.
In contrast, Maupassant's The Temper is permeated with pessimism, in which man lives in an empty, meaningless world, a mixture of mediocrity, selfishness, narrow-mindedness, vanity, and greed for money, and it is not known whether such a desperate state of mind is caused by his evil disease or whether the novelist's inner color is sad.
Guy de Maupassant 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893