The Horla, by master of the short story Guy de Maupassant, is in my opinion one of the most intense and unnerving pieces of fiction committed to paper. The journal form in which it is written only adds to the creeping psychological horror and ensures a very uncomfortable sense of dread and foreboding.
In the form of a journal, the narrator conveys his troubled thoughts and feelings of anguish. All around him, he senses the presence of a being that he calls the “Horla” (taken from the French “Hors” (outside) “de la” (there)). Throughout the novel, the main character’s sanity, or rather, his feelings of alienation are put into question as the Horla progressively dominates his thoughts. The presence of the Horla becomes more and more intolerable to the protagonist, to the point that he is ready to kill either the Horla, or himself.
The paranoia and mental fear experienced by the narrator as he descends into madness is so vivid, you do get the sense that de Maupassant himself was in a very unhealthy mental state; interestingly, his own history seems to confirm this. Again, from Wikipedia:
In his later years he developed a constant desire for solitude, an obsession for self-preservation, and a fear of death and crazed paranoia of persecution, that came from the syphilis he had contracted in his early days. On January 2, in 1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat and was committed to the celebrated private asylum of Dr. Esprit Blanche at Passy, in Paris, where he died on July 6, 1893.
Guy De Maupassant penned his own epitaph: “I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing.” He is buried in Section 26 of the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.
That’s one hell of an epitaph!
Here it is, in full:
THE HORLA
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
1887
May 8. What a lovely day! I have spent all the morning lying on the grass in front of my house, under the enormous plantain tree which covers and shades and shelters the whole of it. I like this part of the country; I am fond of living here because I am attached to it by deep roots, the profound and delicate roots which attach a man to the soil on which his ancestors were born and died, to their traditions, their usages, their food, the local expressions, the peculiar language of the peasants, the smell of the soil, the hamlets, and to the atmosphere itself. I love the house in which I grew up. From my windows I can see the Seine, which flows by the side of my garden, on the other side of the road, almost through my grounds, the great and wide Seine, which goes to Rouen and Havre, and which is covered with boats passing to and fro.
On the left, down yonder, lies Rouen, populous Rouen with its blue roofs massing under pointed, Gothic towers. Innumerable are they, delicate or broad, dominated by the spire of the cathedral, full of bells which sound through the blue air on fine mornings, sending their sweet and distant Iron clang to me, their metallic sounds, now stronger and now weaker, according as the wind is strong or light.
What a delicious morning it was! About eleven o’clock, a long line of boats drawn by a steam-tug, as big a fly, and which scarcely puffed while emitting its thick smoke, passed my gate.
After two English schooners, whose red flags fluttered toward the sky, there came a magnificent Brazilian three-master; it was perfectly white and wonderfully clean and shining. I saluted it, I hardly know why, except that the sight of the vessel gave me great pleasure.
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