The original naughty schoolboy? Joseph Conrad's essay on Maupassant


Author. Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward (or 0161__Rajivan, if that helps)
Abstract. This paper proposes that Joseph Conrad's essay on Maupassant is "a nonsense essay", made of charming falsehood and contradiction, e.g. Mauspassant is logical and clear, in the French tradition; later we are told he thinks very little, he is a conveyer of rich perceptual experience. It is the sort of essay a schoolboy cleverer than any of his teachers and sure of achieving great things might write.  The analysis is preceded by material concerning Milan Kundera.
Draft version: version 3 (23 Sep 2026 - edited on the Eurostar London to Paris, v2 3rd April 2026, a few edits; v.1 11th March 2026)

        Have you ever been a teacher and had the misfortune of teaching students cleverer than yourself? "A teacher: why would I do that?" you ask. But sooner or later most of us must engage in some teaching, however much we subscribe to "You've either got it or you don't", "Those who can do and those who cannot teach" and other anti-education proverbs: anti-pedagogical, if I may be permitted this grander word. (By the way, the order of this essay is some personal experience  and then some examples of writers like clever students.)
        
        I am not sure if I have taught a student cleverer than myself, at least in the kind of cleverness I appreciate (see Eliot 1871-2: chapter 58; Edward 2024), but I remember I once taught a class of mostly international students. At the end of the course, there was a presentation. A girl from Malaysia addressed the audience on various occasions - a young woman is probably more exact. They responded with silence to her questions. And she became increasingly nervous. The next year, assigned to the same course, I advised students not to turn to the audience for support. "Probably don't ask the audience questions," I said, "It is the last session and they may not say anything in response and then you are likely to become nervous." I should probably have proceeded cautiously: "If you are going to ask, make sure you are the leader at the front rather than hoping for some support from your fellow students." A bright boy opened his presentation with bold questions for the audience, mockingly adding afterwards that a sagely figure advised not to.
        
        Reading a relatively recent novel, I came upon these words:
"You certainly remember this scene from dozens of bad films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running, and laughing."
I wonder if the author was a comparable clever schoolboy - well, my recollection above is from university teaching. He was taught proper referencing by his dutiful film studies teacher - have you ever taught referencing? - and his response was to omit all references and shrewdly open with words along the lines quoted. "Who needs references for such familiar material?"

        When did this all start, in the realm of letters, assuming my interpretation above: this naughtily showing that one is cleverer than the teacher, with his or her stupid advice? Was nautical Joseph Conrad the original naughty schoolboy? We turn to his essay on Maupassant for what one literary expert can illuminate of another, but his essay seems a mixture of contradictions and falsehoods, though by some charm one keeps reading - or skimming.
        
Surely art for art's sake died in 1900, but Conrad writes:
"Maupassant of all writers of fiction demands least forgiveness from his readers.  He does not require forgiveness because he is never dull."
But writers can require forgiveness while being exciting! A rousing speech in favour of genocide requires forgiveness, at least by Christian lights.
        Conrad tells us:
"Maupassant's renown is universal, but his popularity is restricted.  It is not difficult to perceive why.  Maupassant is an intensely national writer.  He is so intensely national in his logic, in his clearness, in his aesthetic and moral conceptions, that he has been accepted by his countrymen without having had to pay the tribute of flattery either to the nation as a whole, or to any class, sphere or division of the nation. The truth of his art tells with an irresistible force; and he stands excused from the duty of patriotic posturing."
When one reads "Maupassant is an intensely national writer" as the explanation for his restricted popularity, one guesses that this fellow Maupassant - Conrad is purporting to introduce Maupassant to English readers - is so patriotic, so proudly French, that his writing does not attract those who are not themselves French. But in the next sentences Conrad discourages this interpretation, in favour of the interpretation that Maupassant exhibits certain virtues long associated with French writing, though perhaps not in our day: its clarity and logic. But why would that inhibit popularity? No idea.

Anyway, later on Conrad casts Maupassant as a man of sensation, of sensory perceptions, not thought:
"It cannot be denied that he thinks very little.  In him extreme energy of perception achieves great results, as in men of action the energy of force and desire."
The reader of Conrad's essay is like a person travelling in a shaky wagon, across a rocky road: "I thought you meant this, but you seem to actually mean that," "I thought you mean that, but now you say this…."

        A point of greater consistency across the essay is that Maupassant's artistry is not immediately evident. He is an honest and just and simple writer, rather than a flashily stylish one. But I recall reading Maupassant in translation during the coronavirus epidemic and the 19th century master stood out above all others in the anthology of French stories for his evocative style:
"Who has not passed a sleepless night in a little stagecoach jingling its way across the country, where steam travel is still unknown, seated next to some unknown young woman glimpsed in the beam of the lantern as she stepped on board the coach outside the whitewashed house in a country town? And when morning comes, and your brain and ears are numbed by the constant tintinnabulation and the rattling of the windows, how delightful to see your pretty, tousled, travelling companion open her eyes, look about her, tidy her rebellious curls with the tips of her elegant fingers, and adjust her hair, ascertaining with a sure touch if her corset is straight, the waist in place and her corsets not too creased."
So this is the Maupassant whose literary artistry is imperceptible, according to Conrad, in virtue of its simplicity? Am I not taking sufficient account of the higher standards at Conrad's time: this was simplicity back then? Doubt it! I suppose we rely on some honesty from others when assessing stylistic matters. "Has something been lost in translation? I can't see any literary flourish here; seems plain English to me," you say with your best bewildered tone?


References
Joseph Conrad. 1904. Guy de Maupassant. Available at:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1143/pg1143.txt
Terence Rajivan Edward. 2024. The varieties of cleverness again: Rosamond and rational actor economics. Available at PhilPapers:
https://philpapers.org/rec/EDWTVO-7
George Eliot. 1871-72. Middlemarch. Accessed on 4th February 2020 from:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/145/145-h/145-h.htm
Maupassant. A mother's tale. In Helen Constantine (ed.), French Tales. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (See Google books for the material quoted.)
Milan Kundera (translated by Aaron Asher, from the French). 1996. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. London: Faber and Faber.

See also:
elishatan. 2026. Dealing with racism. Available at:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Dd6W2nxzTqt/