7.33 Maupassant — Boule de suif I — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the first part of Guy de Maupassant's Boule de suif , the story that made him famous, in the text of its first edition. Follow a long narrative that moves from a panorama of a defeated city to a single coach and its ten passengers. Recognise Maupassant's irony: a narrator who never states a judgement and yet makes every character judge themselves. Name the social types the story gathers, from the count to the prostitute, and the words that place them. Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Pendant plusieurs jours de suite des lambeaux d’armée en déroute avaient traversé la ville. For several days in succession, remnants of a routed army had passed through the town. Le devoir commençait pour les vaincus de se montrer gracieux envers les vainqueurs. For the defeated, the duty began of being gracious to the victors. était célèbre par son embonpoint précoce qui lui avait valu le surnom de Boule de suif. was famous for an early plumpness that had earned her the nickname Ball of Tallow. comment n’ai-je pas songé à apporter des provisions. how did I not think of bringing provisions. L’appétit grandissait, troublait les esprits Appetite was growing and troubling their minds le casque brillant d’un dragon au pied pesant qui suivait avec peine la marche plus légère des lignards. the shining helmet of a heavy-footed dragoon who could hardly keep up with the lighter march of the infantrymen. Prerequisites : 5.30 — this reading follows 5.30 Vocabulary , and it opens the readings of the fourth phase. You read Maupassant's La Parure in 7.17 Reading ; you need the literary past of 3.15 Conjugation , the history words of 5.26 Vocabulary , and the habit of reading on without stopping, which the last phase built. About this text Note: this text contains prostitution and a threat of violence. In the spring of 1880 Émile Zola and five younger writers published a collection of stories about the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–1871, Les Soirées de Médan , named after Zola's country house. Maupassant, then twenty-nine and unknown, contributed Boule de suif . Flaubert wrote to him that it was a masterpiece, and within a few weeks Maupassant was a celebrated author. Many critics still consider it the finest French short story of the century. The story takes place in the winter of 1870, after the defeat of the French armies. Rouen is occupied by the Prussians. Ten travellers obtain permission to leave by coach for Dieppe, to sail from there to Le Havre, still held by the French: a wine merchant and his wife, a cotton manufacturer and his wife, a count and countess, two nuns, a republican agitator called Cornudet, and a prostitute nicknamed Boule de suif , ball of tallow, for her plumpness. Snow slows the coach; nobody has brought food except her. This lesson gives the first third of the story, about 3,800 words, from the first lines to the end of the meal in the coach, with a few passages left out and marked […] . The text is that of the first edition, Les Soirées de Médan , published in Paris by Charpentier in 1880, as transcribed in French Wikisource. The next two lessons continue it to the end. Reading Maupassant's irony The panorama. The story opens far from its characters, with the French army in flight and the Prussians entering Rouen. The long sentences and lists, des mobilisés , des petits moblots , quelques culottes rouges , show a whole society in defeat before the coach gathers ten of its members. Portraits. Each passenger is introduced in a short paragraph that ends with a detail that undoes the respectable surface: Loiseau sells very bad wine very cheaply; Carré-Lamadon opposed the Empire only to be paid more for rallying to it; the count's family owes its title to a royal adultery. Maupassant never comments; he lets the facts speak. Capital letters. When the narrator writes that the six rich passengers ont de la Religion et des Principes , the capitals are ironic: they mark the words as the passengers' own, said with self-satisfaction. The same device appears in au nom du Sabre . Hunger. The meal is the turning point of this part. The respectable passengers despise the prostitute until they are hungry enough to eat her food, and the narrator records each step of their surrender with exact politeness: Le premier pas seul coûtait. Reading it a second time, part by part The defeat. Broken French troops pass through Rouen; then the German army arrives, and the inhabitants hide behind their shutters. The occupation begins, and the defeated must be polite to the victors. The departure. Some merchants, with interests in Le Havre, obtain a pass. On a snowy morning ten travellers meet in the courtyard of the Hôtel de Normandie , and the coach, with six horses instead of four, sets off slowly. The passengers. The Loiseaus, the Carré-Lamadons and the Brévilles form the respectable side; two nuns pray; opposite them sit Cornudet and Boule de suif. The wives unite against the prostitute, the husbands against the democrat. Hunger. The coach is so slow that by ten in the morning it has not covered four leagues, and it sticks in the snow; there is nowhere to eat. At three o'clock Boule de suif opens a basket of chicken, pies, fruit and wine. The meal. Loiseau accepts first, then the nuns and Cornudet; Mme Carré-Lamadon faints from hunger; at last the count accepts for everyone. Boule de suif tells how she attacked a Prussian soldier, and quarrels with Cornudet, because she supports the fallen Emperor and he the Republic. Full translation An English translation of the whole text, made for this course and kept close to the original. The numbers are the paragraph numbers of the original text, so you can move between the two. Boule de suif For several days in succession, remnants of a routed army had passed through the town. They were not troops but disbanded hordes. The men had long, dirty beards and ragged uniforms, an