Sur l’eau n’est pas le livre le plus connu de Maupassant, mais il bénéficie d’un certain succès d’estime. Et pour être du Maupassant, c’est du Maupassant ! Un immense soin apporté aux mots et de magnifiques descriptions. C’est ce que j’ai préféré dans ce livre, en partie parce que c’était ce que j’étais venue y chercher.
Mais entre ces descriptions, il y a toute la misanthropie dont Maupassant peut faire preuve quand il trempe sa plume dans le vitriol. Il n’est pas tendre avec le genre humain, il est prompt à exposer la bêtise humaine, encore plus quand l’homme est en troupeau. Mais ce sont aussi toutes les contradictions de l’écrivain qui ressortent, lorsque tantôt il se place au-dessus de la mêlée tantôt il admet qu’il n’est pas mieux que les autres. Et cela fait passer la pilule.
Un condensé de Maupassant, donc, avec le récit de ces quelques jours de navigation à bord du Bel Ami (pas difficile de deviner d’où viennent les fonds qui lui ont permis cet achat…) : un regard acéré sur le genre humain, une santé déjà chancelante, et surtout un superbe style et des phrases qu’on ne se lasse pas de relire pour en apprécier le polissage parfait et l’éclat sans pareil.

de Maupassant's book afloat is presented as a journal of the author's eight day cruise along the French Cote d' Azur. Each chapter is dated, more than a few even mention a location; Nice, Cannes, Agay, Saint-Raphaël, Saint-Tropez...

Most of the pages however are covered by de Maupassant's musings on war, society, women, humanity's ordeal and quite a few outburst of his Spleen. The pages relating to the actual sailing are very sparesely distributed through the book.

Belying its structure, the book is not a journal of a sailing expedition. The volume is actually a collection of earlier writings, articles, essais and monographs, brought together and structurally organised over a narrative framework of a sailing trip. Each separate piece pops up as an impression, a flow of thought that is loosely triggered by an event of the trip.

Despite the beautiful writing ( was Maupassant not Flaubert's protégé ? ) and an amusing chauvinistic resume of French history in a few "bons mots", Maupassant's ramblings will hardly capture the imagination today. Wrestling with his narcisistic Spleen and "dégout" of the Modern world, his opinions, however true, have acquired a naive gloss. Maupassant lived after all a 150 years ago. His disgust for instance with the French politics that lead to the war of 1870 bleakens with what we know has yet to come in the next century.

Still the few pages that do relate about the sailing are exquisite. They conjure a charming account of a vanished unspoiled world. There is no mass tourism yet; no crowded marinas; the Sailboats still have no auxilliairy engines and anchor in the harbours; the weather forecast is still predicted by the experienced old Sailor; the Yachts and sailing vessels catch the early land breeze to leave port and out at sea depend on the incoming sea breeze to bring them back to port.

These few scattered sailing pieces are the true attraction of this book, but are unfortunately too few to recommend the volume as a whole. ( )

A marvellous work, an account of a voyage GDM made on his yacht along the coast of the South of France with his two hired sailors. His most personal work, in which the author comes closest to the reader, perhaps because it's plotless, and the narrator gives himself time to dream, to rant, and reflect. It contains matchless descriptions of the sea and the South of France, and amazing confessional stuff, in which Mauppassant comes across as a precursor to all the modern confessional writing of French lit: the Celines, the Cendrars. It contains Maupassant's famous rant against militarism and war, his reaction to the sack of Paris by the Germans in the 1870-71 Franco Prussian war. Here's a snippet:

Men of war are the scourge of humanity. We fight against nature, against ignorance, against all sorts of obstacles to mitigate the evils of our miserable existence. There are men, philanthropists, learned men, who spend their whole lives toiling to discover how to help, support, relieve their brother mortals... then along comes a war, and in six months, the generals have destroyed the work of twenty years of patient effort...

An incredible work, one to turn to again and again. ( )

A quasi-fictional travelogue? Regardless of what's true or not Maupassant's writing and observational skills are as impressive as ever here. It's probably only recommended for dedicated fans of the author, but such people will find some very nice passages here. A short read and definitely worth it. ( )