Maupassant, a disillusioned idealist, a cynical involuntary critic, a sad mocker, an insincere bon vivant, a bored workaholic, and a guide to crystal artistic honesty, entered literature when short stories were becoming more popular than novels — in the late 19th century, during a period of rapid growth of mass media, when the public's clip thinking was already developing, though it had not yet received its name. Maupassant considered himself a student of Flaubert and Turgenev; he was admired by Leo Tolstoy and Chekhov; Isaac Babel consciously imitated him, and André Maurois did so unconsciously; to this day, Maupassant is translated into other languages more than all other French writers. Each of Maupassant's stories is the essence of truth, a transparent crystal, in whose structure we perceive the ugliness and beauty, the uniqueness and universality of man, a being who is cruel, tender, and bewildered, crying from fleeting joy and laughing from unrelenting despair.
