Guy de Maupassant - Forte como a Morte (seguido de) Pierre e Jean

Unpublished in Portugal, two manifesto-novels by Maupassant about life and art.

Strong as Death, whose title is taken from a verse of the Song of Songs ("Love is as strong as death, and jealousy as cruel as the grave"), is a novel in which Maupassant recreates the life of the painter Olivier Bertin, a celebrated worldly artist. Bertin, a portrait painter, sees the most beautiful women in Paris pass through his studio. One day, he falls in love with one of them, the exceptional Anne de Guilleroy, who soon becomes his lover. Years later, the love between the painter and the model has become something more stable, which, however, changes with the return of Anne's daughter, Anette, the living portrait of her mother as a young woman, and for whom the painter develops a secret passion. A beautiful meditation and psychological study on the passage of time and its influence on passions, love, and art.

Pierre and Jean, Maupassant's manifesto novel, is a psychological study of a family divided by a secret: that of two brothers whose tranquil life is disturbed by an inheritance left to only one of them.

In both novels that make up this volume, Maupassant speaks of the image we project onto others and the image we absorb from others, and the influence of recognition.