Hubbry Logo
The HorlaThe HorlaMain
Open search
The Horla
Community hub
The Horla
logo
8 pages, 0 posts
0 subscribers
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
The Horla
The Horla
The Horla
View on Wikipedia
from Wikipedia

"The Horla"
Short story by Guy de Maupassant
Cover of the 1908 edition, illustrated by William Julian-Damazy
Text available at Wikisource
Original titleLe Horla
TranslatorJonathan Sturges
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
GenreHorror short story
Publication
Publication date1887
Published in English1890

"The Horla" (French: "Le Horla") is an 1887 short horror story written in the style of a journal by the French writer Guy de Maupassant, after an initial (much shorter) version published in the newspaper Gil Blas, October 26, 1886.

The story has been cited as an inspiration for Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu", which also features an extraterrestrial being who influences minds and who is destined to conquer humanity.[1]

The word horla itself is not French, and is a neologism. Charlotte Mandell, who has translated "The Horla" for publisher Melville House, suggests in an afterword that the word "horla" is a portmanteau of the French words hors ("outside"), and là ("there") and that "le horla" sounds like "the Outsider, the outer, the one Out There", and can be transliterally interpreted as "the 'what's out there'".[2]

Summary

[edit]

In the form of a journal, the narrator, an upper-class, unmarried, bourgeois man, conveys his troubled thoughts and feelings of anguish. This anguish occurs for four days after he sees a "superb three-mast" Brazilian ship and impulsively waves to it, unconsciously inviting the supernatural being aboard the boat to haunt his home.

All around him, he senses the presence of a being that he calls the "Horla". The torment that the Horla causes is first manifested physically: The narrator complains that he suffers from "an atrocious fever", and that he has trouble sleeping. He wakes up from nightmares with the chilling feeling that someone is watching him and "kneeling on [his] chest".

Throughout the short story, the main character's sanity, or rather, his feelings of alienation, are put into question as the Horla progressively dominates his thoughts. Initially, the narrator himself questions his sanity, exclaiming "Am I going mad?" after having found his glass of water empty, despite not having drunk from it. He later decides that he is not, in fact, going mad, since he is fully "conscious" of his "state" and that he could indeed "analyze it with the most complete lucidity." The presence of the Horla becomes more and more intolerable to the protagonist, as it is "watching ... looking at ... [and] dominating" him.

After reading about a large number of Brazilians who fled their homes, bemoaning the fact that "they are pursued, possessed, governed like human cattle by ... a species of vampire, which feeds on their life while they are asleep ... [and] drinks water", the narrator soon realizes the Horla was aboard the Brazilian three-mast boat that he had previously greeted. He feels so "lost" and "possessed" to the point that he is ready to kill the Horla. The narrator traps the Horla in a room and sets fire to the house, but forgets his servants, who perish in the fire. In the last lines of the story, faced with the persistence of the Horla's presence, he concludes suicide to be his only liberation.

Background

[edit]

While the canonical version of the text is the 1887 novella, two earlier versions of the text demonstrate Maupassant's development of the central premise. Lettre d'un fou, translated into English as "Letter of a Madman", was published in the 17th February 1885 edition of Gil Blas, under the pseudonym 'Maufrigneuse'.[3] In the short story, the narrator writes a letter to a doctor describing his disillusionment with the world and his newfound ability to perceive a parallel invisible world. A later version of the text, also entitled Le Horla, was published in the 26 October 1886 edition of the newspaper Gil Blas. This version also sees the narrator impart his account to a group of doctors; this psychiatric context was dismissed from the final version of the text, which is written in the form of a journal.[4]

Another possible prototype for "The Horla" is Maupassant's short story "Lui?", translated into English as "Him?" and published in the 3rd July 1883 edition of Gil Blas.[5] In the story, the narrator begins to see a figure who appears only when he is alone, and is only referred to as "He" or "Him". This figure inspires such terror in the protagonist that he is forced into marriage in order to resist being alone. These themes of alienation and a fear of solitude reoccur in "The Horla".[6]

It is likely that Maupassant was inspired by his own interest in hypnosis and psychiatry in writing the short story, having frequently attended the lectures of noted neurologist Dr Jean-Martin Charcot.[4] The 1880s in France were a time of great public interest in hypnotism, being used as it was both as a cure of illness and as an anaesthetic. While now dismissed as pseudoscientific, at the time the discipline was at the forefront of much medical experimentation. Simultaneously, however, hypnotism was the subject of much examples of theatre and showmanship, with many attending to witness outlandish and bizarre spectacles. This contrast in the popular perception of hypnotism between the scientific and the supernatural manifests, it has been argued, within "The Horla".[7]

Major themes

[edit]

The Horla's magnetic influence over the main character puts him in the same literary context as the double or doppelgänger, a field which had previously been explored in Adelbert von Chamisso's Peter Schlemihl (1814), Edgar Allan Poe's "William Wilson" (1839), and Theophile Gautier's Avatar (1856). However, while in the traditional literary form of the double the perceived threat is a physical one capable of autonomy, in "The Horla" the titular creature is instead elusive and invisible, acting as a manifestation of the main character's solitude and anxiety.[4] The Horla is characterised not as a physical being but as a "double-delusion", a means by which the narrator externalises his own depression into the physical world. It is no coincidence that he comes to the realisation that in order to destroy the Horla, he must destroy himself.[6]

The ambiguity as to whether the eponymous Horla is an actual malign entity or a symptom of the narrator's mental illness is a key element of the short story's tension. As the reader is not presented with information external to the protagonist that confirms any of the events of the short story, they are forced to reconcile with the possibility that the narrator is unreliable. Maupassant structures the short story in such a manner that the growing need for an implied reader to settle for an interpretation coincides with the vacillations of the story's protagonist; just as the narrator grows more and more mentally unstable, the ambiguity of what is occurring in the short story, and the corresponding uncertainty in a presumed reader, heightens.[8]

Legacy

[edit]

Literature

[edit]

Reinterpretations of Maupassant's short story occur throughout horror fiction. In the short story "The Theater Upstairs" (1936) by Manly Wade Wellman, the plot revolves around characters watching a film adaptation of "The Horla".[9] "The Horla" is the inspiration for Robert Sheckley's short story "The New Horla" (2000) in his collection Uncanny Tales.[10] The American horror fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft is said to have been inspired by the story, with his 1928 short story "The Call of Cthulhu" having been particularly influenced by it.[1] In his survey "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927), he provides his own interpretation of the story:

Relating the advent in France of an invisible being who lives on water and milk, sways the minds of others, and seems to be the vanguard of a horde of extra-terrestrial organisms arrived on earth to subjugate and overwhelm mankind, this tense narrative is perhaps without peer in its particular department.[11]

The figure of the Horla is a recurring character in Victorian pastiche fiction. In Wellman's novel Sherlock Holmes' War of the Worlds (1975), Sherlock Holmes suggests to Professor Challenger that the events of "The Horla" might actually be true.[12] Horlas are mentioned or featured in several stories from the Tales of the Shadowmen series, including one story where a Horla menaces occult detective Thomas Carnacki.[13]

Kingsley Amis's first novel Lucky Jim (1954, chapter 6) describes Jim Dixon, a guest lecturer at a university, waking in a guestroom owned by the senior colleague whose good will he is depending on to continue in his job the next academic year, discovering he has fallen asleep drunk, and burned holes through blankets and sheets and on a bedside table. "Had he done this all to himself? Or had a wayfarer, a burglar, camped out in his room? Or was he the victim of some Horla fond of tobacco?"[14]

The Bartimaeus Sequence (2003–2010) features horlas as powerful spirits, who appear as shadowy apparitions that cause madness in humans similar to the titular Horla of the short story.[15]

Film and television

[edit]
  • The first cinematic adaptation was Zlatcha Notch (1914), translated as "The Terrible Night", by Russian film director Yevgeni Bauer.[16]
  • The movie Diary of a Madman (1963) is loosely based on "The Horla".[17]
  • Tim Lucas has argued that "The Horla" is also an influence on Mario Bava's story "Telephone", featured in his film Black Sabbath (1963).[18]
  • Jean-Daniel Pollet directed a film adaptation called Le Horla in 1966.[19]
  • The Star Trek episode "Wolf in the Fold" (1967), scripted by Robert Bloch, features an evil, primordial psychic entity that contains echoes of the Horla. [20]
  • Le Horla, a 2023 television film directed by Marion Desseigne-Ravel and starring Bastien Bouillon in the primary role, first broadcast on Arte on 2 June 2023. Freely inspired by Maupassant's story, the film is transposed to the modern day.[21]

Radio

[edit]

Maupassant's short story has had a number of different radio adaptations:

  • "The Horla" was adapted for the syndicated radio program The Weird Circle in the 1940s.[22]
  • "The Horla" was dramatised on a 1st August 1943 episode of Inner Sanctum Mysteries starring Arnold Moss.[22]
  • "The Horla" (1947) is episode 8 of Peter Lorre's radio serial Mystery in the Air.[23] This has been considered one of Lorre's most powerful radio performances; in the end of the broadcast, Lorre breaks the boundaries of the narrative by stating the fact that the "real" Peter Lorre is still being menaced by the Horla while broadcasting on the radio.[22]
  • The Hall of Fantasy radio show aired an episode on September 5, 1952, called "The Shadow People", which makes reference to the Horla.[22]
  • The CBS Radio Mystery Theater adapted the story for episode 49, which originally aired on February 22, 1974. It starred Paul Hecht as Maupassant.[24]

Music

[edit]
  • "The Horla" is the title of a song from the British heavy metal band Angel Witch, appearing on their 2012 album As Above, So Below.[25]
  • The concept album D'Après Le Horla De Maupassant by Canadian progressive rock band The Box is based on "The Horla".[26]
  • The third track of French hip-hop artist Nekfeu's debut album, Feu, is entitled "Le Horla".[27]

Comics

[edit]

The story was adapted into the comic book Le Horla written by Frédéric Bertocchini [fr] and illustrated by Éric Puech. It was first published in 2012 but quickly withdrawn due to a conflict between the publisher and distributor. It was republished in 2022.[28]

References

[edit]
[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

The Horla

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
The Horla is a by French author , first published in its definitive version in as a first-person narrative chronicling an unnamed protagonist's terrifying encounters with an invisible, malevolent entity that drains his vitality and erodes his sanity. The story forms the culmination of a of related works by Maupassant exploring themes of and mental , beginning with Lettre d'un fou in 1885—a letter from a man committed to an asylum describing hallucinations—and followed by an initial third-person version of Le Horla in 1886, which framed the tale within a medical consultation. The 1887 revision shifted to the intimate diary format, heightening ambiguity by removing the external framing and immersing readers directly in the narrator's unraveling perceptions, a technique that amplifies the story's unreliable narration. In the narrative, the , a landowner near , begins recording subtle anomalies such as a sense of being observed, unexplained depletion of liquids like and , and recurring nightmares that leave him exhausted and weakened. These escalate into vivid encounters with the Horla—an entity he names after researching mesmerism and invisible beings—manifesting as tactile presences, manipulated thoughts, and failures of mirrors to reflect his form, prompting futile attempts at resistance including experiments and isolation. The culminates in a desperate act of to eradicate the creature, which inadvertently claims the lives of his servants, followed by the narrator's contemplation of as his only remaining escape from the Horla's dominion. Central themes include the blurred boundary between and , the terror of the unseen and unfamiliar, and humanity's to superior, incomprehensible forces, with the Horla symbolizing both a predator and a projection of psychological torment. The tale critiques by portraying humans as unwitting prey in a larger ecological , akin to how people dominate animals, while motifs of mirrors and underscore and loss of . These elements draw on 19th-century scientific fascination with hypnotism and emerging psychiatric concepts, positioning The Horla as a bridge between naturalist realism and the fantastic. Written amid Maupassant's own deteriorating health from , which progressed to and hallucinations leading to his institutionalization and death in 1893, the story mirrors his personal frailties and fears of encroaching madness, infusing its horror with autobiographical authenticity. Its innovative use of subjective narration has influenced modern , earning acclaim as a seminal work in French fantastic for its exploration of existential dread and the limits of human perception.

Publication History

Precursors and Early Versions

The origins of "The Horla" trace back to an earlier short story by Guy de Maupassant titled "Lettre d'un fou" ("Letter from a Madman"), published on February 17, 1885, in the Parisian newspaper Gil Blas under the pseudonym Maufrigneuse. This precursor was structured as a desperate letter from a protagonist confined in a psychiatric hospital to an absent physician, detailing intense hallucinations and an overwhelming fear of an invisible presence that disrupts the narrator's sense of self. Notably absent was any specific entity like the Horla; instead, the narrative centered on raw psychological torment, including the chilling absence of the narrator's reflection in a mirror—"Je ne me vis pas dans la glace!"—symbolizing a fractured identity without supernatural attribution. It emphasized unfiltered distress, devoid of medical analysis or external validation. Maupassant revisited and expanded the concept later that year, leading to the first iteration explicitly titled "Le Horla," published on October 26, 1886, also in Gil Blas. This version shifted the narrative frame to a case study presented by a fictional doctor, Dr. Marrande, who observes the protagonist's deteriorating condition amid nightmares, unexplained physical symptoms like weight loss, and anomalous events such as a floating rose. Here, the Horla emerged for the first time as a named, invisible entity exerting influence, with the mirror motif retained but now tied to this presence, alongside testimony from a neighbor to blur the line between hallucination and reality. Less intricate than the 1887 edition, it fostered an ambiguous tone that heightened the protagonist's isolation without resolving the entity's existence. These precursors differed markedly from the 1887 version in both and tone, with the earlier drafts prioritizing stark, unadorned depictions of psychological unraveling over structured horror. The 1885 piece conveyed immediate, confessional urgency, while the 1886 introduced tentative , both underscoring raw distress through limited external perspectives and minimal plot resolution. Maupassant's iterative expansions appear driven by his deepening personal fascination with unseen forces and identity dissolution, influenced by his own health struggles and literary explorations of the fantastic, as seen in echoes of his uncle Alfred Le Poittevin's themes of mirrors and transmigration in Une Promenade de Bélial. This process transformed the story from a brief hallucinatory outburst into a more layered examination of human vulnerability.

Canonical 1887 Edition

The canonical version of "Le Horla" first appeared as a serial in the Parisian newspaper Gil Blas on May 25, 1887, under its final title. The expanded and definitive edition was included in the 1887 Le Horla, published by Paul Ollendorff in . This collection edition, which serves as the standard reference text, significantly lengthened the narrative from its precursors, incorporating additional journal entries that progressively build psychological tension and dread through the narrator's escalating observations. The first English translation of the 1887 version was rendered by Jonathan Sturges and published in 1890 as part of the anthology The Odd Number: Thirteen Tales from the French of , issued by Harper & Brothers in New York. More recent translations have aimed to enhance accessibility for contemporary readers; notable among them is Charlotte Mandell's rendition for Melville House Publishing, first released in 2012, which compiles all three versions of the story in a single volume for comparative study, prioritizing fluid, modern prose while preserving the original's atmospheric intensity.

Biographical and Historical Context

Maupassant's Personal Experiences

was diagnosed with in the late 1870s, a condition that progressed to and manifested in hallucinations, , and mental decline during the 1880s, paralleling the psychological descent of the narrator in "The Horla." By the mid-1880s, these symptoms intensified, contributing to his growing preoccupation with invisible forces and loss of control, themes central to the story written in 1887. documented his deteriorating health in personal writings, seeking treatment from multiple physicians as his condition worsened, which echoed the narrator's futile attempts to rationalize and combat an unseen tormentor. His attendance at Jean-Martin Charcot's demonstrations on hypnotism further exposed him to ideas of of consciousness that resonated with his own experiences. A family history of mental illness compounded Maupassant's struggles, with his younger brother Hervé exhibiting similar symptoms of and being institutionalized before dying in an asylum in 1889. This tragedy deeply affected Maupassant, amplifying his fears of hereditary madness and self-destruction, motifs that permeated "The Horla" just two years prior. The loss of his brother underscored the personal toll of the disease on his life, as both siblings grappled with progressive neurological deterioration. In 1892, amid escalating and hallucinations, Maupassant attempted by cutting his throat while staying near his mother in , an act that directly reflected the story's themes of desperate escape from an overwhelming, intangible presence. He was subsequently committed to a private asylum under Dr. Esprit Blanche, where he spent his final months until his death in 1893. Maupassant's extensive correspondence and habit of recording daily observations in letters provided a biographical parallel to the journal format of "The Horla," allowing him to chronicle his inner turmoil with introspective detail.

Scientific and Literary Influences

Guy de Maupassant's The Horla (1887) draws heavily from the late 19th-century scientific discourse on the human mind, particularly the work of neurologist , whose lectures on hypnotism and Maupassant attended at the Salpêtrière between 1884 and 1886. Charcot's demonstrations emphasized as a often induced by suggestion, linking it to hypnotic states that could produce hallucinations and loss of will, concepts that informed the story's depiction of an invisible entity's control over the narrator. This influence is evident in Maupassant's earlier "Magnétisme" (1882), which references Charcot's experiments alongside stage hypnotists, and in "Le Horla" itself, where the narrator notes the "prodigious results" achieved by hypnotists aligned with the Nancy School, contrasting yet complementing Charcot's -focused approach. The story also reflects the era's fascination with spiritualism and mesmerism, movements that blurred the lines between science and the in during the . Mesmerism, originating from Franz Mesmer's theory of as a universal fluid influencing the body and mind, evolved into hypnotic practices that captivated intellectuals, including Maupassant, who explored similar ideas in tales of invisible forces. Allan Kardec's spiritism, popularized through works like (1857), further permeated French culture by positing communication with unseen entities via mediums, a notion resonant with the Horla's ethereal presence and the period's séances. These influences aligned with emerging psychiatric concepts, such as —a fixation on a single idea leading to , as theorized by Étienne Esquirol in the 1830s—and , the shared psychosis described by Charles Lasègue and Jean-Pierre Falret in 1877, which underscored contagious mental states akin to the narrator's escalating torment. Literarily, The Horla echoes precedents from and , whose works shaped Maupassant's use of psychological ambiguity. Poe's unreliable narrators, as in "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843), prefigure the Horla's journal-style introspection, where sanity unravels through subjective doubt, a technique Maupassant adapted to heighten horror. Similarly, Hoffmann's tales, such as "The Sandman" (1816), influenced the motif of a spectral double exerting unseen influence, blending the fantastic with mental dissociation in ways that informed Maupassant's narrative. Darwinian evolutionary theory provides another layer, portraying the Horla as a superior being in a framework, as analyzed in scholarly examinations of the story's themes. Charles Darwin's (1859) introduced ideas of progressive adaptation and extinction, which resonated in late 19th-century literature as fears of human obsolescence; in The Horla, the entity represents an evolved predator, critiquing anthropocentric dominance. This interpretation, detailed in a 2016 study, links the tale to broader anxieties over evolution's implications for humanity's place in nature.

Narrative Structure and Summary

Journal Format and Style

The Horla employs a journal format consisting of dated entries that span several months, creating an epistolary structure typical of horror narratives by simulating the immediacy of the narrator's unfolding experiences. This technique fosters a sense of real-time progression, where each entry builds upon the previous one to heighten tension through the accumulation of personal observations and reflections. By presenting the story as a private , Maupassant immerses the reader in an intimate, confessional mode that mimics authentic self-documentation, enhancing the genre's reliance on subjective testimony to evoke unease. The first-person narration is inherently unreliable, blending the diary's confessional intimacy with an escalating conveyed through fragmented sentences, repetitions, and exclamations that disrupt syntactic coherence. For instance, phrases like "I cannot... I cannot" recur to convey mounting desperation, drawing the reader into the narrator's subjective turmoil while leaving the veracity of events open to interpretation. This unreliable perspective amplifies , as the narrator's assertions oscillate between lucid accounts and chaotic outbursts, mirroring without external validation. Stylistic shifts mark the prose's evolution from measured, rational descriptions—such as detailed sensory observations of the environment—to increasingly delirious passages filled with ellipses, dashes, and abrupt declarations that evoke disorientation. These transitions not only reflect the narrator's fluctuating coherence but also serve as a literary device to sustain , gradually eroding the boundaries between ordered thought and perceptual chaos. The incorporation of intertextual elements, including a direct quote from —"If God made man in His own image, man has certainly paid Him back again"—introduces philosophical undertones, echoing the satirical exploration of human limitations and superior entities found in works like . Central to the narrative's linguistic innovation is the neologism "Horla," coined by Maupassant as a portmanteau of the French words "hors" (outside) and "là" (there), evoking an elusive presence that hovers beyond tangible reach. This invented term symbolizes the intangible intruder by capturing a sense of spatial and existential proximity, underscoring the story's play on the unseen and the unknowable through its phonetic and semantic ambiguity.

Detailed Plot Synopsis

The story unfolds through a series of dated journal entries written by an unnamed narrator, a French landowner residing in a overlooking the near . On May 8, the narrator experiences a moment of profound joy while waving to the crew of a passing Brazilian ship, an event that later takes on ominous significance. Approximately three weeks afterward, he succumbs to an inexplicable illness characterized by fever, , and a pervasive sense of oppression, which physicians attribute vaguely to neuralgia or but fail to cure. As his condition persists over the following months, strange phenomena intensify. During a nighttime walk, the narrator glimpses what appears to be a tall white sheet undulating in the moonlight across the river, evoking a profound terror; upon investigation, no trace remains. His planned vacation to Mont Saint-Michel proves disastrous, as overwhelming lassitude confines him to his room for the duration, amplifying his isolation and dread. Returning home, he observes milk vanishing from glasses overnight and experiences tactile sensations of an invisible entity drinking from his bedside , caressing his hair, and even pressing on his body while he sleeps, all without any visible cause. Seeking rational explanations, the narrator conducts experiments, including attempting to hypnotize his servants; one enters a deep , leading him to ponder whether an unseen force might similarly influence the human mind. These events culminate in a visit to a nearby asylum, where he learns from the director of patients afflicted by delusions of invisible beings possessing and tormenting them, mirroring his own experiences and deepening his conviction of an external reality. Desperate to escape, he travels to Mont Saint-Michel within , but the oppressive presence relentlessly follows, manifesting in disrupted sleep, stolen nourishment, and auditory hallucinations of laughter. Back at the château by late summer, the narrator identifies his tormentor as "the Horla," an invisible, superior being that feeds on human vitality and represents the next evolutionary stage beyond humanity. In a climactic attempt to eradicate it, he sets to the house with the intention of trapping and incinerating it; however, the blaze kills his two servants, who perish in the flames, while the narrator escapes unharmed, realizing too late that the Horla has evaded the trap. Overwhelmed by the entity's apparent invincibility and his own diminishing will, he contemplates humanity's subjugation. The journal concludes on September 10 with the narrator's final resolution to kill himself, as the Horla appears to have survived the fire.

Themes and Interpretation

Psychological Instability and Madness

The narrator in "The Horla" serves as an unreliable focalizer whose account progressively unravels from initial hypochondriacal concerns to outright , mirroring 19th-century conceptualizations of as a spectrum of mental disorders influenced by physical and environmental factors. This descent is marked by escalating sensory distortions and compulsive rationalizations, which underscore the narrative's instability and the protagonist's eroding grip on reality, as analyzed in studies of Maupassant's portrayal of internal perceptual collapse. The story's journal format amplifies this unreliability, presenting the narrator's entries as fragmented attempts to document symptoms that blend hypochondria—such as unfounded fears of illness—with hallucinatory experiences, reflecting the era's view of as a precursor to deeper psychological breakdown. Central to the tale's psychological depth are themes of isolation and , where the Horla embodies the narrator's internalized fears, symbolizing the fragility of human and the solipsistic trap of unchecked . As the withdraws further into , his become increasingly self-referential, heightening a of existential alienation that critiques the limits of individual in confronting unseen threats. This internalization transforms external anxieties into a personal psychological , emphasizing how isolation exacerbates mental fragility and leads to a solipsistic where the self doubts its own boundaries. The narrative draws on contemporary psychiatric influences, depicting symptoms reminiscent of —such as and auditory hallucinations—or syphilitic , a form of that Maupassant himself suffered from, which often manifested as progressive in the late . These portrayals align with the era's emerging understanding of mental disorders as potentially organic, influenced by figures like , whose highlighted the interplay between physical symptoms and psychological distress. Maupassant's own deteriorating health due to likely informed this realistic depiction of madness as a tangible, encroaching force rather than mere fancy. The ambiguity surrounding the Horla—whether hallucination or external entity—fuels interpretations of the story as an exploration of anthropocentric denial, where human frailties in perception lead to psychological denial of broader realities, as critiqued in ecocritical readings that link the narrator's madness to a refusal to acknowledge non-human influences. This blurring of sanity and insanity highlights the unreliability of self-perception, with the Horla functioning as a projection of the mind's vulnerabilities. Throughout, the narrator's role in self-diagnosis and persistent doubt exemplifies failing rationalizations against accumulating "evidence" of intrusion, as he oscillates between scientific explanations and irrational fears, ultimately succumbing to the weight of his own interpretive . This process critiques the limitations of 19th-century self-analysis, where attempts at objective documentation only deepen the spiral into madness.

Supernatural Entity and Human Limitations

In Guy de Maupassant's The Horla, the titular entity is depicted as an evolved, invisible being originating from another realm, which preys upon humans by draining their vital energy in a manner akin to vampires consuming , thereby implying a Darwinian succession where humanity is supplanted by a superior . This portrayal positions the Horla not merely as a but as a parasitic force that exploits human weaknesses, underscoring the evolutionary precariousness of humankind. The philosophical undertones of the narrative challenge by confronting the limits of human knowledge and the terror of the unknown, with the Horla embodying collective fears of obsolescence in an indifferent . A 2016 analysis highlights how these elements draw directly from concepts of , portraying the entity as the inevitable successor to a flawed human race, thereby critiquing humanity's presumed dominance over and . The story's interrogative mood, pervasive in the narrator's journal entries, further amplifies this by repeatedly questioning the boundaries of reality and human supremacy, as explored in 2022 on Maupassant's "Horla" cycle, which identifies this rhetorical strategy as a mechanism to destabilize certainties about and control. Central to the Horla's menace is the motif of hypnotic control, where the entity exerts influence over the narrator's actions and thoughts, evoking contemporary interests in spiritualism and the fragility of during the late nineteenth century. This theme reflects broader anxieties about unseen forces overriding individual agency, linking the intrusion to hypnotic phenomena studied by figures like , whom Maupassant encountered. In the horror genre, the invisible terror of the Horla serves as a for and insidious social forces, with the entity's implied Brazilian origins symbolizing invasive external threats that erode personal and national identities from within.

Legacy and Adaptations

Literary Influences

Guy de Maupassant's "The Horla" (1887) exerted a profound influence on the development of , particularly through its portrayal of an invisible, insidious entity that blurs the boundaries between psychological delusion and cosmic horror. , in his seminal essay (1927), hailed "The Horla" as Maupassant's masterpiece among his supernatural tales, praising its "model of poise and restraint" in depicting the arrival in of an unseen being that sustains itself on and , visible only as a "transparent black cloud" at night, and conveyed through journal entries that build a cumulative sense of dread. This recognition positioned the story as a pinnacle of French , influencing Lovecraft's own approach to subtle, suggestion-based horror. The narrative's core elements— an invisible cosmic horror and an unreliable first-person narration descending into madness—directly inspired Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928), where ancient entities exert influence through dreams and unseen forces, echoing the Horla's predatory invisibility and the protagonist's fractured psyche. Lovecraftian scholar S.T. Joshi has cited "The Horla" as a key precursor, noting parallels in the theme of imperceptible extraterrestrial or otherworldly presences that erode human sanity. Beyond Lovecraft, "The Horla" impacted mid-20th-century writers in science fiction and , particularly through its emphasis on psychological , where the entity's existence could be madness or reality. Robert Sheckley's "The New Horla" (2000), included in his collection Uncanny Tales, reimagines Maupassant's creature as potentially benevolent, subverting the original's terror while retaining the motif of an unseen influencer on . Similarly, Manly Wade Wellman's "The Theater Upstairs" (1936) centers on characters encountering a fictional of "The Horla," using the story's premise to explore meta-horror and perceptual uncertainty in a tale of an anomalous cinema. These works highlight how Maupassant's inspired later authors to probe the unreliable nature of in speculative genres. "The Horla" played a foundational role in establishing the "invisible monster" trope in 20th-century short stories, predating and shaping depictions of unseen antagonists that challenge human senses and rationality, as seen in the evolution of motifs from parasitic entities to broader cosmic threats. This trope, central to the story's horror of an imperceptible superior being, influenced the trajectory of by providing a template for entities that terrorize through absence rather than visibility, paving the way for explorations in pulp and beyond. In , echoes of "The Horla" persist in works and addressing and unseen threats, with 2025 discussions underscoring its enduring relevance to themes of invisible in modern horror. For instance, G.W. Thomas's in Dark Worlds Quarterly examines the story's legacy in evoking terror from the unseen, linking it to ongoing literary interests in psychological and extraterrestrial .

Audiovisual and Other Media Adaptations

One of the earliest audiovisual adaptations of Guy de Maupassant's The Horla is the 1963 American Diary of a Madman, directed by Reginald Le Borg and starring as the tormented magistrate Simon Cordier. This loose adaptation relocates the story to 19th-century , incorporating the journal format through narration while adding explicit visuals, such as ethereal apparitions and possessions, to heighten the horror beyond the original's ambiguity. More recently, the 2023 French television film Le Horla, directed by Marion Desseigne-Ravel and broadcast on , stars as Damien, a experiencing an unseen presence after moving to the countryside with his family. The production emphasizes psychological realism, portraying the protagonist's descent through subtle unease and familial tension rather than overt elements. In radio drama, The Horla was adapted twice for the Inner Sanctum Mysteries series, first on May 9, 1941, and again on August 1, 1943, with the later episode focusing on atmospheric sound effects to evoke the invisible entity's dread. Three decades later, the presented a 1974 adaptation on February 22, hosted by and starring actors like Norman Rose, which amplified audio cues—such as whispers and creaking—to build suspense around the narrator's growing . Comic book adaptations include the 2012 French Le Horla, written by Frédéric Bertocchini and illustrated by Éric Puech, published by Tartamudo as a faithful yet visually dynamic retelling that captures the journal's introspective horror through stark black-and-white panels. This work was republished in 2022, maintaining its emphasis on the protagonist's mental unraveling. The story has influenced music, notably in the 2012 heavy metal song "The Horla" by British band , featured on their album As Above, So Below, which lyrically explores themes of misfortune and an invisible heir overtaking humanity. Canadian band The Box released the 2009 D'Après Le Horla De Maupassant, drawing on the tale as a central motif across tracks that blend rock with narrative elements of unseen terror. Other media include G.W. Thomas's 2025 article "The Horla: Terror Unseen" in Dark Worlds Quarterly, which examines the story's history and its adaptations in , radio, and . Stage readings of The Horla have appeared in horror anthologies, such as audio dramatizations in collections like those from Columbia Workshop in 1937, preserving the journal style for live performance. Most adaptations amplify visuals or sounds to convey the entity's presence while retaining the core ambiguity between madness and the supernatural; recent works post-2020, like the 2023 film, incorporate modern mental health contexts to frame the narrator's experiences as potential psychological disorders.

References

  1. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1180&context=clcweb
  2. https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/bitstreams/f847bebc-9d0e-44b8-963e-d75dd24711e7/download
  3. https://www.academia.edu/30475468/Insanity_the_Invisible_and_the_Unfamiliar_in_Maupassant_s_Le_Horla
  4. https://www.academia.edu/49477627/Maupassants_The_Horla_is_a_Portrayal_of_Human_Frailties_and_a_Critique_of_Anthropocentrism_An_Ecocritical_Deep_Ecological_Perspective
  5. https://openscholar.uga.edu/record/7089/files/widgren_kenneth_d_201405_phd.pdf
  6. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/article/566842
  7. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol5/iss1/3
  8. https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Horla
  9. https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12358
  10. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Maupassant%2C%20Guy%20de%2C%201850-1893
  11. https://mhpbooks.com/books/the-horla
  12. https://www.penguin.com.au/authors/guy-de-maupassant
  13. https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/downloads/dv13zz41h
  14. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/figures-of-the-prefreudian-unconscious-from-flaubert-to-proust/maupassant-charcot-and-the-paranormal/240C83EA85997CC1481031801410BD8A
  15. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22854701/
  16. https://library.syracuse.edu/digital/guides/m/maupassant_gd.htm
  17. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11895695_About_Medicine_and_the_Arts_Charcot_and_French_Literature_at_the_fin-de-siecle
  18. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Spiritism
  19. https://karger.com/ene/article/83/3/333/126053/Charcot-Janet-and-French-Models-of-Psychopathology
  20. https://www.academia.edu/105551613/Hysteria_as_Alternative_Masculinity_in_the_Gothic_Discourse_of_the_19th_Century_The_Case_of_E_T_A_Hoffmann_Edgar_Allan_Poe_and_Guy_De_Maupassant
  21. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310573959_Nature_Selects_the_Horla_How_the_Concept_of_Natural_Selection_Influences_Guy_de_Maupassant%27s_Horror_Tale
  22. https://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1191&context=core_reader
  23. http://arno.uvt.nl/show.cgi?fid=156681
  24. https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Horl.shtml
  25. https://shs.cairn.info/article/E_RIP_242_0391?lang=en
  26. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/593/593-h/593-h.htm
  27. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236742753_Telling_Madness_and_Masculinity_in_Maupassant%27s_Le_Horla
  28. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26800261
  29. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Guy-de-Maupassant
  30. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352859532_Maupassant%27s_The_Horla_is_a_Portrayal_of_Human_Frailties_and_a_Critique_of_Anthropocentrism_An_EcocriticalDeep_Ecological_Perspective
  31. https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789401206846/B9789401206846-s015.pdf
  32. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361916460_Guy_de_Maupassant_Doubt_Dogma_and_the_Dead
  33. https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx
  34. https://escholarship.org/content/qt2cs6h55c/qt2cs6h55c.pdf
  35. https://lovecraftzine.com/2013/05/29/the-horla-a-possible-inspiration-for-cthulhu-the-audios-text-and-the-movie/
  36. http://www.dondammassa.com/zshec.htm
  37. https://raconteurpress.substack.com/p/deej-recommends-the-theater-upstairs
  38. https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/invisibility
  39. https://gwthomas.org/the-horla-terror-unseen/
  40. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056993/
  41. https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/17093/diary-of-a-madman
  42. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27923731/
  43. https://eurochannel.com/en/The-Horla-Marion-Desseigne-Ravel-France.html
  44. https://archive.org/details/OTTR_Inner_Sanctum_Mysteries_Singles
  45. https://www.otrr.org/FILES/Scripts_pdf/Inner%20Sanctum/Inner%20Sanctum%20Mystery%2041-05-09%20The%20Horla.pdf
  46. https://www.cbsrmt.com/episode/44-the-horla.html
  47. https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-33125-BD-Horla-Puech.html
  48. https://books.google.com/books/about/le_horla.html?id=7QmwzwEACAAJ
  49. https://genius.com/Angel-witch-the-horla-lyrics
  50. https://www.discogs.com/release/4490334-The-Box-Le-Horla
  51. https://tangentonline.com/oldtimeradio/qthe-horlaq-by-guy-de-maupassant/
Add your contribution
Related Hubs
User Avatar
No comments yet.