Maupassant and the Divided Self: `Qui sait?'

Traditionally critics of Guy de Maupassant's narrative "Qui sait?" (published in 1890, two years before his unsuccessful suicide attempt and subsequent confinement) have maintained that its protagonist's bizarre behavior reflects Maupassant's own illness and that the story itself defies rational explication. Yet the structure – with frame, division, chronological and spatial orientation – and the symbols and literary allusions are clearly controlled. Moreover, when read in terms of schizophrenic symptomatology, Maupassant's portrayal of a character in psychological anguish is both lucid and compassionate. His clinical empathy is also consonant with the modern analyses of R.D. Laing and Silvano Arieti. (KCK)