Our Heart

The profound suffering of loving more than one is loved

André Mariolle is everything a man of his time and class should be: cultivated, wealthy, refined in taste and manner. When introduced to the salon of Michèle de Burne-a beautiful young widow who presides over Paris's most brilliant artistic and literary circle-he alone remains unmoved by her charms. This indifference intrigues Michèle, and gradually, inevitably, Mariolle falls deeply, helplessly in love.

But Michèle, for all her intelligence and grace, suffers from a distinctly modern affliction: she cannot love. Too self-aware, too analytical, too invested in her freedom, she collects admirers as she collects art-appreciating their qualities while remaining fundamentally incapable of the vulnerability that passion demands. Mariolle finds himself trapped in the particular agony of loving someone who can never reciprocate with equal intensity.

Published in 1890, three years before Maupassant's death from syphilis at age forty-two, Our Heart (Notre Coeur) represents his final completed novel and his most sustained psychological analysis. Drawing on his intimate knowledge of Parisian salon culture, Maupassant creates an unforgettable portrait of emotional dependency, modern alienation, and the ways sophisticated self-consciousness can paradoxically diminish our capacity for genuine feeling.

A masterpiece of psychological realism-elegant, precise, and devastatingly acute about the particular sufferings of the modern heart.