"I go to bed, and I wait for sleep as a man might wait for the executioner. I wait for its coming with dread, and my heart beats and my legs tremble, while my whole body shivers beneath the warmth of the bedclothes, until the moment when I suddenly fall asleep, as a man throws himself into a pool of stagnant water in order to drown..."
Guy De Maupassant, protégé of Gustave Flaubert, is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and a master novelist.
In the early hours of January 2, 1892, the renowned French writer Guy de Maupassant, sensing the approach of insanity, attempted suicide.
There then followed long months of confinement in a private clinic as he was overcome by his illness, a syphilitic disease of the nervous system.
De Maupassant left behind a text largely ignored until after his death, which is now regarded as one of the founding elements for the myth surrounding the famous short story Le Horla.
In it he ponders what's worse: a real monster--or ones own delusions?
His words read like letters from hell. They are literally the psychic delineations of his personality as his 'self' disintegrates before his eyes.
Le Horla isn't your stock blood-sucking vampire from other Gothic literature.
Le Horla is scarier.
GUY de MAUPASSANT (1850–1893) is generally considered to be among the very finest French writers. He is the author of Deux Amis, Mother Savage, Mademoiselle Fifi, Bel-Ami, Le Horla, and numerous other novels and short stories.
