Preface to the Works of Maupassant — close read

Предисловие к сочинениям Гюи де Мопассана (Tolstoy) PSS Tom 30, pp. 3–24 (main text); variants pp. 273–302; «История писания и печатания» pp. 487–504; «Описание рукописей и корректур» pp. 504–508.

Piece in the “Art & aesthetics satellites” dive; orbits the treatise What Is Art? (what-is-art). The commentary itself names this preface as a preparatory stage of the treatise: «по мыслям и рассуждениям, содержащимся в ней, ее можно рассматривать как вступительную часть к трактату «Что такое искусство?»» (commentary).

1. Composition window

Pinned window: ~early September 1893 (first draft) → 2 April 1894 OS / 14 April 1894 NS (signed, finished at Voronezh).

• The signature on the printed text reads «2-го апреля, Воронеж» (main text, final line). The commentary fixes the author’s date precisely: «Л. Толстой. 2 апреля 1894. Воронеж» (commentary, MS №15 / «Описание рукописей»). So finish = 2 April 1894 OS = 14 April 1894 NS (12-day offset). Tolstoy closed the article in Voronezh on the evening of 1 April en route back to Moscow, after a stay at Chertkov’s farm Ржевск (25 March–1 April), and signed it dated 2 April (commentary).
• Start: the first complete autograph (first draft) was written «в первых числах сентября» 1893; a copy of that autograph bears the date «5 сентября 1893 года» in T. L. Tolstaya’s hand (commentary). So the writing proper began early September 1893 OS (~mid-September NS). T. L. Tolstaya wrote to Nikiforov on 6 September 1893 that Tolstoy «начал писать предисловие к Мопассану» (commentary).
• The work then ran in two stages with long gaps: a first redaction (MSS 1–6) up to roughly late February / not later than 1 March 1894, then a fresh restart («бросил всё прежнее предисловие и начал писать новое» — letter of 2 March 1894) producing the second redaction (MSS 7–14), then a sweep of corrections through the proofs into May. The Diary, 21 April 1894: «За всё это время писал предисловие к Мопассану, кажется, уяснилось вполне...» (commentary).
• TEI header year (1951) is the PSS publication year, not composition. Composition is 1893–94 per the commentary; trust the commentary.

Occasion / who asked / who translated: - The article was written as a preface for the Russian edition of selected Maupassant that Tolstoy himself curated, published by «Посредник» (Posrednik) “for intelligent readers.” It served first as the preface to the «Монт-Ориоль» book (Posrednik, M. 1894) and then to the «На воде» story collection (Posrednik, M. 1894) (commentary). - The translator who asked Tolstoy for the preface: Л. П. Никифоров (L. P. Nikiforov). Per his own 1912 account, an 1893 evening conversation at Tolstoy’s Khamovniki house about French writers (Tolstoy lamenting that Maupassant was little known in Russia) made Nikiforov want to translate him; Tolstoy agreed to select the best works. The discussion is dated to the first half of January 1893 (commentary). - Татьяна Львовна Толстая (Tatyana Lvovna Tolstaya), Tolstoy’s daughter, agreed to take on editing the translation; in practice Tolstoy himself edited Nikiforov’s translations, with Tatyana assisting (commentary). - Publishing-side managers at Posrednik named in the commentary: П. И. Бирюков (P. I. Biryukov / Birukoff) (then running Posrednik; bought Nikiforov’s translations on Tolstoy’s proposal, late Sept 1893) and В. Г. Чертков (V. G. Chertkov), to whom Tolstoy reported the promise of the preface (letter 20 May 1893: «Обещал еще предисловие к Мопассану...»).

2. Genesis & the people

How/why it came to be. Tolstoy first read Maupassant when Turgenev handed him «La maison Tellier» in 1881 (the commentary corrects the place to Yasnaya Polyana, on Turgenev’s 22 August 1881 visit, not «в бытность свою у меня» loosely). The book left him cold. He reversed his judgment after reading «Une vie» in 1883 (letter to his wife, 10 Nov 1883) and thereafter read everything signed by the name. Interest peaked in 1893 when he undertook the Russian edition and wrote the preface for it. The commentary stresses the article quickly outgrew its subject: «Мопассан тут только повод, а это, должно быть, выйдет давно ожидаемая статья об искусстве» (E. I. Popov to Chertkov, 5 March 1894) — i.e. the long-awaited essay on art, which became What Is Art?.

Tolstoy’s own diary/letter reactions quoted in the commentary: - Diary, 28 Aug 1884 (9 Sept NS): «Вечером читал Maupassant. Забирает мастерство красок» — but «нечего ему, бедному, писать». - Diary, 1 Dec 1889 (on «Fort comme la mort»): «Читал прекрасно написанный роман Мопассана, хотя и грязная тема». - Letter (early Dec 1889) to T. A. Kuzminskaya: «Прочти «Fort comme la mort». Это написано прекрасно и задушевно, оттого и тонко» — but «горе, что автору кажется, что мир сотворен только для приятных адюльтеров». - Diary, 23 Oct 1890 (on «Le port», in Novikov’s translation): called the story «чудным». - Letter to Chertkov, 18 Oct 1890: he is rendering for Posrednik «ужасной силы и цинизма и глубоко нравственно действующий рассказ Gui Maupassant». - Diary, 23 March 1894: «Занимаюсь опять теорией искусства по случаю предисловия к Мопассану. Предисловие тоже не выходит». - A reported remark of Maupassant himself (commentary, closing): on reading «Смерть Ивана Ильича» shortly before his illness, Maupassant told a French critic «Я вижу, что вся моя деятельность была ни к чему, что все мои десятки томов ничего не стоят».

People named around the piece — name · role · wiki-entity judgment:

3. Keystone passages (8)

Each quoteRu is an exact verbatim substring from the main-text extract (v30_003_024...txt).

K1 — the talent/moral-relation split first stated

• quoteRu: Но, судя по тому томику, который я прочел, он, к сожалению, был лишен главного из трех, кроме таланта, необходимых условий для истинного художественного произведения.
• (working English): “But, judging by the volume I read, he was, unfortunately, deprived of the chief of the three conditions — besides talent — necessary for a true work of art.”
• Significance: The pivot of the whole piece: talent (the gift) is set apart from the conditions of artistic worth, and the most important of those is the one Maupassant lacks. Engages the WIA content/moral criterion (“good” art) as distinct from the infectiousness conditions.

K2 — the three conditions, defined (the marquee; see §4)

• quoteRu: Из этих трех условий: 1) правильного, т. е. нравственного, отношения автора к предмету, 2) ясности изложения или красоты формы, что одно и то же, и 3) искренности, т. е. непритворного чувства любви или ненависти к тому, что изображает художник, из этих трех условий Мопассан обладал только двумя последними и был совершенно лишен первого.
• (working English): “Of these three conditions — (1) a correct, i.e. moral, relation of the author to the subject; (2) clarity of exposition, or beauty of form, which is one and the same; and (3) sincerity, i.e. an unfeigned feeling of love or hatred toward what the artist depicts — of these three conditions Maupassant possessed only the last two, and was entirely deprived of the first.”
• Significance: The full triad. Conditions (2) clarity and (3) sincerity map directly onto two of the three WIA infection-conditions; condition (1) the moral relation is the added content/religious criterion. This is the seedbed sentence of What Is Art?

K3 — talent defined as a power of attention/vision

• quoteRu: Автор обладал тем особенным, называемым талантом, даром, который состоит в способности усиленного, напряженного внимания, смотря по вкусам автора, направляемого на тот или другой предмет, вследствие которого человек, одаренный этой способностью, видит в тех предметах, на которые он направляет свое внимание, нечто новое, такое, чего не видят другие.
• (working English): “The author possessed that special gift, called talent, which consists in a capacity for intensified, concentrated attention — directed, according to the author’s tastes, on one subject or another — by virtue of which the person endowed with this capacity sees in the objects on which he directs his attention something new, such as others do not see.”
• Significance: Defines talent as a faculty of seeing, independent of moral content — so a writer can have it in full and still be “bad art.” Sets up the strain Maupassant puts on the theory.

K4 — sincerity as the condition without which art has no effect

• quoteRu: обладал и тем условием достоинства художественного произведения, без которого художественное произведение не производит действия, — искренностью, т. е. не притворялся, что любит или ненавидит, а точно любил и ненавидел то, что описывал.
• (working English): “He possessed too that condition of a work of art’s worth, without which a work of art produces no effect — sincerity, i.e. he did not pretend to love or hate, but actually loved and hated what he described.”
• Significance: Sincerity is named the condition “without which a work of art produces no effect” — the decisive infection-condition in WIA. Crucially, Tolstoy grants Maupassant this fully, which is exactly what makes him a hard case for the content criterion.

K5 — lacking the moral relation = not knowing good from evil

• quoteRu: Но, к сожалению, будучи лишен первого, едва ли не главного, условия достоинства художественного произведения, правильного, нравственного, отношения к тому, что он изображал, т. е. знания различия между добром и злом, он любил и изображал то, чего не надо было любить и изображать, и не любил, и не изображал того, что надо было любить и изображать.
• (working English): “But, unfortunately, being deprived of the first and well-nigh chief condition of a work of art’s worth — a correct, moral relation to what he depicted, i.e. knowledge of the difference between good and evil — he loved and depicted what ought not to be loved and depicted, and did not love and did not depict what ought to be loved and depicted.”
• Significance: Spells out the moral relation as “knowledge of the difference between good and evil.” This is the content/religious criterion of WIA in embryo.

K6 — the painter anecdote: a clear, skilled work with no relation to its subject

• quoteRu: Всё было превосходно написано, но не было видно никакого отношения художника к своему предмету.
• (working English): “Everything was superbly painted, but no relation of the artist to his subject could be seen.”
• Significance: A non-Maupassant exemplar (the religious-procession painting — Repin per the commentary) of mastery without moral relation. Generalizes the criterion beyond literature; the “его дело изображать жизнь” reply is the indifference-theory Tolstoy is attacking.

K7 — the cement of a work is the author’s moral relation, not plot/character unity

• quoteRu: цемент, который связывает всякое художественное произведение в одно целое и оттого производит иллюзию отражения жизни, есть неединство лиц и положений, а единство самобытного нравственного отношения автора к предмету.
• (working English): “the cement that binds every work of art into a single whole, and thereby produces the illusion of reflecting life, is not unity of persons and situations, but the unity of the author’s own distinctive moral relation to the subject.”
• Significance: Raises the moral relation from a per-passage judgment to the structural principle of artistic unity. (Note: the extract reads «есть неединство» — a verbatim oddity, parsing as «есть не единство… а единство». Quoted exactly.) Directly anticipates WIA’s account of what makes a work cohere.

K8 — talent, given free rein, drives moral growth (the Balaam figure)

• quoteRu: Художник только потому и художник, что он видит предметы не так, как он хочет их видеть, а так, как они есть.
• (working English): “An artist is an artist only because he sees things not as he wants to see them, but as they are.”
• Significance: Resolves the strain: true talent (truthful vision) tends to correct a defective moral relation over a career — Maupassant “wishing to praise love, ended by cursing it” (the Balaam comparison follows). Links the talent-condition back toward the content criterion: vision, fully exercised, bends toward truth.

4. The “three conditions” — marquee statement

This is the centre of the piece. Two verbatim statements, the second the one that became WIA’s spine.

Negative form (Maupassant lacks the first): see K2 above (Из этих трех условий: 1) правильного, т. е. нравственного, отношения автора к предмету, 2) ясности изложения или красоты формы, что одно и то же, и 3) искренности...).

Positive form (all three met in «Une vie»): - quoteRu: в романе этом почти в равной степени соединяются все три условия истинного художественного произведения: … 1) правильное, т. е. нравственное, отношение автора к предмету, 2) красота формы и 3) искренность, т. е. любовь к тому, что описывает автор. - (working English): “in this novel all three conditions of a true work of art are combined in almost equal degree: (1) a correct, i.e. moral, relation of the author to the subject; (2) beauty of form; and (3) sincerity, i.e. love for what the author describes.” - Significance: The same triad stated affirmatively, with «Une vie» as the one Maupassant novel that satisfies all three. The pairing (negative for «La maison Tellier», positive for «Une vie») is the engine of the whole reading: same gift, different moral relation, different artistic result.

Mapping to What Is Art?: - Condition (2) clarity/beauty of form ↔ WIA’s clarity. - Condition (3) sincerity ↔ WIA’s sincerity (the decisive infection-condition). - (WIA’s third infection-condition, individuality/particularity of feeling, is here folded into the definition of talent itself — the power to see “something new… that others do not see” — rather than listed among the three.) - Condition (1) the moral relation ↔ WIA’s added “good art” criterion (right relation to the religious consciousness of the age). In the preface this is “knowledge of the difference between good and evil”; the religious framing is supplied later and explicitly in the article’s closing pages (the “prophets” passage, K-adjacent).

5. Redaction notes

The article was heavily reworked: two redactions, ~20+ manuscripts, four proof passes (commentary, «Описание рукописей»). Three notable shaping moves:

(a) The three-conditions vocabulary was being assembled in the first redaction. In variant №3 (рук. №4) the conditions are stated in a different order and weighting than the final text — “value of a work of art is determined… by three conditions: by the degree of importance and quality of content, by the author’s sincerity… and by beauty of form”: - verbatim (variant): ценность художественного произведения определяется, по моему мнению, тремя условиями: степенью важности и качеством содержания, искренностью автора, т. е. любовью к тому, что он описывает, и красотой формы. The final text recasts the first condition from “importance and quality of content” to “a correct, i.e. moral, relation of the author to the subject” — a sharpening from content to the author’s stance toward the content. This is the key conceptual move of the redaction.

(b) A whole long stratum on the concept of beauty (красота) was written and then cut. The commentary records that in correcting the first proof Tolstoy «почти полностью исключил рассуждения о понятии красоты». Variants №§11–19 preserve the deleted material (the Greek τὸ καλόν, Egyptians/Hebrews/Indians “who do not even know what beauty means in our sense,” Kant vs. Guyau, beauty as «une convention humaine»). The commentary’s verdict: this material «значительно подробнее и глубже Толстой развил» later in What Is Art? — so the cut here is literally the overflow that fed the treatise. What survived in the preface is only the part bearing on Maupassant’s own «Pierre et Jean» preface and on Renan.

(c) The «Yvette» ending was re-cut, and the structural-unity point was added at the proof stage. The verset (рук. №20) once ended «И одно впечатление разрушает другое. И не остается ничего» (commentary). Tolstoy struck «не остается ничего» and wrote in the margin the now-famous image — which stands in the final printed text as: - verbatim (main text): И весь роман распадается, рассыпается, как непромешанный хлеб. - “(working English):” “And the whole novel falls apart, crumbles, like badly-mixed bread.” - (The commentary records the marginal insertion in the slightly shorter form «Весь роман распадается…»; an earlier variant, №20, has «И роман рассыпается, разваливается, как непромешанный хлеб».) He then drafted (in a letter-borne addition to Popov, 31 May) the explicit gloss that artistic unity rests on «единство миросозерцания автора… нравственное отношение его к описываемым лицам» — the K7 idea — though that exact gloss was not pasted in, since a fuller autograph insertion (рук. №21) covered the same ground for all the novels.

6. Publication & translation

• First publication: as the preface to «Монт-Ориоль» (Maupassant, trans. Nikiforov), izd. «Посредник», Moscow — out of press 29 May 1894 (commentary; E. I. Popov to Tolstoy, 29 May 1894). Re-used, with small authorized variants, as the preface to the Posrednik story collection «На воде» (M. 1894) — the PSS prints from this «На воде» text. The two prefaces are not identical; PSS lists the textual divergences (e.g. «отрицания»→«отвращения»; puzyriki/puzyrki misprint chain on p.10).
• It first entered a collected works in 1894 (part 13). Later reprints include «Л. Н. Толстой о писателях и о книгах», вып. 4 (Posrednik, 1912).
• English translation status: The standard route is the Aylmer Maude Tolstoy. The preface is carried in Maude’s Recollections and Essays / the “Essays and Letters” family as “On Guy de Maupassant” (Preface to the Works of Guy de Maupassant), 1894 — FLAG: not independently re-verified within this dive’s sources; confirm the exact Maude volume/pagination at ingestion before citing. No English text is bundled in the extracts read here.

7. Triangulation note (hypothesis)

EXTENDS What Is Art? — strongly, and on the commentary’s own testimony.

• This preface is the seedbed where the “three conditions of true artistic creation” are first cut, with the talent-vs-moral-relation split made explicit (K1, K2, K5). The commentary states the link directly: the article «можно рассматривать как вступительную часть к трактату «Что такое искусство?»», that Tolstoy’s broadest formulations of these thoughts «позднее высказал в трактате «Что такое искусство?»», and that the cut beauty-material was developed «значительно подробнее и глубже» in the treatise. Popov’s 1894 letter — “Maupassant is only the occasion; this will be the long-awaited essay on art” — is the genesis statement of WIA.
• Where Maupassant STRAINS the theory: he is precisely the awkward case the content criterion needs and the infection criterion cannot handle. By Tolstoy’s own grant, Maupassant has talent (K3), clarity/beauty of form to «редкого совершенства», and sincerity in full (K4) — i.e. two of the three conditions, and the decisive infection-condition (sincerity). On the pure infectiousness test he should pass. Yet Tolstoy rules most of him “bad art” — because of condition (1), the moral relation. So Maupassant is the live demonstration that infectiousness alone is insufficient and a content criterion must be added: a writer of real talent and real sincerity can still produce art that fails. The strain is then partly relieved by K8 (talent, freely exercised, tends to correct the moral defect over a career — the “moral growth” arc from «Une vie» toward the late stories), which lets Tolstoy keep both the gift and the verdict.
• Net: this is not a confirmation (the doctrine did not yet exist) nor a complication of a settled view — it is the place the doctrine’s central distinction was first made, with Maupassant as the test case that forces the moral criterion into the theory.

Provenance / attribution notes

• All composition dates, the people, the publication facts, and the Maupassant deathbed remark are from the «История писания и печатания» commentary (Gudzy/Gusev editorial apparatus, PSS Tom 30) and are attributed to it above.
• All quoteRu strings are verbatim substrings of the main-text extract v30_003_024_Predislovie_k_sochinenijam_Gjui_de_Mopassana.txt (keystones and §4) or, where labelled “(commentary)” / “(variant)”, of the commentary and variants extracts respectively.
• OS→NS conversion uses the standard 12-day 1890s offset; only the 2 April 1894 finish date is given an NS equivalent in the sources by analogy (the commentary itself gives an NS gloss for the 28 Aug 1884 diary note: «28 августа (9 сент. по нов. ст.)»).