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'An Art Which Conceals Art'

Reading short stories of Guy de maupassant imprints on its reader such 'natural' impressions and clear pictures that he is overcome by the mere words of the story. He feels watching things happening around him. He sees and 'feels' the events, the plot of the story as they are per se. I've rarely seen a talent unique in its quality as Guy de's. More than that we're intoxicated by the pictures he creates in which our nature is punctuated that we tend to forget if it were a piece of art! My intuitions were confirmed when I read a critic's, Arthur Symons, remarks on Maupassant, he says: 

"But his style is quite different from that of Flaubert (his mentor and teacher), of which it has none of the splendid, subdued richness, the harmonious movement; it is clear, precise, sharply cut, without ornament or elaboration; with much art, certainly in its deliberate plainness, and with the admirable skill of an art which conceals art…" [From “Studies in Prose and Verse” (1899).]

There is no point in his stories where you may come to praise the 'thought' in intellectual terms, A. Symons, the critic, points out. "What impresses you is the extreme ingenuity of its handling; the way in which this juggler keep his billiard-balls harmoniously rising and falling in the air." And, he further observes, "...it has just enough of ordinary human feeling." This is why I felt much closeness and nearness to what Guy de writes, and because of this quality of him, the same critic in 1899 remarked, "..an art which conceals art."!

2 did criticisms:

Awais Aftab said...

I personally was more affected by the themes of his stories, which often revealed the dark and cruel side of human nature, than the style of his writings.

M. Umer Toor said...

I really wished to express this feeling, which impressed on me vehemently, thought that it was another thing...!

and it seems as if he had no style (that's a very partial and incomplete an observation, though) keeping in mind the simplicity of his words...

thanks for reading and providing criticisms :)

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