MAUPASSANT'S TREES, from ATTENTION, an anthology

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Contents

Foreword Sally O’Reilly

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A reason, amongst others, why I slept badly last Monday night George Leith

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Space Ice Cream

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George Lynch Maupassant’s Trees Judith Hagan 16

Study of The Three Graces by Antonio Canova, and Voids Rose Higham-Stainton

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Blue Light

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Lucy Holt The Grid Laura Robertson 34

Mind the Crossings Yuan Xiao Air Time Esme Boggis

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Maupassant’s Trees Judith Hagan

Jean-Paul’s Grandmother: Flaubert advised the younger Maupassant to sit before a tree, to spend two hours describing it, registering it, weighing the full reality of it. It is said that Maupassant learned about incompleteness, and backed away from the tree as its shape appeared.

A ratio springs between the object, its devotee, and the rest of things. Moving inwards makes a hurry of what’s outside: speed allows time to leap from space, and running, what pulls away finds pace, tugging at the front of distance. One gets closer to nothing, always, by trying.

A loud ticking clock in a childhood room, or a propensity for finding pattern in numbers—plots and subplots grow away from their maker, but the measure of things clings by mutual devotion. /// I try Flaubert’s instruction, but spend my time erasing, not

amassing. Left remaining was, not stewed-down significance, but markers of a covered distance: Its progeny, little sprung-up sycamores, conquer the landlord’s name-yard: weed, weed, neighbour, weed. Taller by position, dark (darker by sky) its trunk—in threads of strain. Its trunk: in parts swells green, in parts—fish-coloured and grey—hard to recall and trudgy.

Its crown, at widest is slim, at tallest, disappears—reappearing as bulbous vapours. The lower region leaves: thirst-puckered hats clasped on heads. Newer leaves curl, too, but with a kind of enthusiasm: some wounded dogs don’t care. At the base—a considerable bulge, and peak, a pigeon forces out morning from later in the day (I’m that willing to hear it). /// But Maupassant, two hours later, considered his distance from description: that a tree could be inactive (I), could be acted upon (II), or, could act (III).

Maupassant (I) Providence has destined us to live naked, in caves or under trees; to disappear behind the trees. They were all three sitting on the grass, at the foot of a huge tree, and were still talking; and their love, their desires, their longing for a closer embrace became so vehement, that they nearly yielded to it at the foot of a tree; under the shade of the trees.

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Farm-buildings awaited the party at the end of that archway of apple-trees; a low house, buried under four enormous poplar trees; clumps of trees in the distance.

He remained hidden behind a tree; talking to himself under the tall trees; through the leafless trees; shining among the trees.

Running up to a farm servant whom he perceived behind a tree; like a fiery young horse ready to gallop off through the trees; under the trees, he took the bottle out of his pocket again, and began to drink; and so he sat down at the foot of a tree, and in five minutes was fast asleep. ///

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We go to our objects like pilgrims, discovering that endings grow distant. For our journey, we’ll have some requirements: It will need to go forwards, but also backwards, outwards It will need to pool, to stagnate, to be given up on It will need to go behind and around its subject It won’t always be direct, nor will it (always) be lonely It will need to backtrack in layers of networked routes It will need to remind of and to remember its limits A pilgrim’s dedication can be broken. My attention slips out of me, always wayward, or, I have been reading about pilgrims lately. \\\

Two shadows walking side by side under the arched roof of the trees all soaked in glittering mist; a narrow path went beneath the trees, so they took it, and when they came to a small clearing, they sat down. Heavy grey clouds were being driven rapidly among the trees; a line of great trees clothed in whiteness; passed over the people like gusts of wind which bow the trees in a forest; the trees, had been placarded with flaming posters; the chestnut trees were lit up with its yellow rays.

Beneath the apple-trees heavy with fruit; his fruit-trees, all a-row, were outlining in shadow upon the walk their slender limbs. He watched the trees; the almost leafless trees through which the moonbeams filtered; his nose began to bleed, and he got up and laid his head against the stem of a tree; against a tree in consternation. He was a navvy, stableman, stone-sawyer; he split wood, lopped the branches off trees; cut down young trees from the neighbouring forests, or climbed up the trees to see; the trees, the plants, the insects, the small birds themselves, who fall from the branches on to the hard ground. \\\ A particular tree, a there and then tree, set about its ancientness by leaning back on history. Lineage, my mother said with a finger on my back, makes walking uphill as easy as cohesion. Stopping to think falls out of the question.

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Maupassant (II)

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We were searching for marks in the stone, the collective shape for rain or blood, or writing. On our way to ancient history, we meet bogs and other landscape tricks. Finding on a wide moor lumps of petrified wood, cups, and rings.

Neolithic practice, over time, forgot its impetus. A second phase continued tradition, but with reason in abeyance, the dedication was broken. /// Maupassant (III) The farmyard, which was surrounded by trees; dazzled at the sight of the apple-trees in blossom, which looked almost like powdered heads; covered with woods, old manorial woods where magnificent trees still remained.

The hollow road which was shaded by the tall trees which grew; surrounded by a small churchyard, and four enormous limetrees; the smell of flowers, of woods, of trees, of the sea. They looked at the tall trees which were dripping. The apple-trees threw their shade all round them; they turned to the right, into a narrow path which was overhung by trees, and suddenly, to avoid a branch which barred their way; the silhouettes of the apple-trees made black shadows at his feet; outlines of trees which frightened me as they creaked and groaned; broken here and there by clumps of trees which hid some homestead.

/// I play a game on the street, pointing or looking with intent, missing the green light (and all sorts of other cues). In my game, people look where I look, fulfilling a mild, aggrandising expectation. I do not like to be surrounded by meaning. I do not like piggy-back attention. In the depths of my privacy, I am sorry.

A note on the text The three sections—Maupassant I, II, and III—are comprised of every mention of trees in the first volume of The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant.

Individual excerpts are separated either by semicolons or full stops, and have been rearranged in order to allow narrative to emerge.

Guy de Maupassant, The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, vol. 1,

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trans. by A.E. Henderson (New York: P. F. Collier & Son Corporation, 1903).

Attention is an anthology of student writing developed from a Royal College of Art MA Writing workshop on attention, scale, duration, and endurance delivered by Brian Dillon.

Excerpted from the brief: ‘The task here is to consider the forms of attention or concentration that inform critical (and other kinds of) writing—these may include the duration of looking or experiencing a work of art, place, object, or state; the spatial delimiting of your topic (a place, a room, a detail); the organisation of material by hierarchy or stratification or narrative movement. Among the narrative clichés often levelled at critics is one that says they have not paid enough “attention” to the work at hand… What is, or could be, the duration, extent, and degree of proper attention? We will think about the degree or kind of attention that our writing demands of the reader, and the techniques adopted to persuade a reader that an object or experience is worthy of attention.’