The Dark Half

Guy de Maupassant considered the greatest French short story writer is exceptionally brilliant and to think he passed away, mentally ill, at the age of 42!
Got to see 'his bitter disillusionment with humanity in general, and women in particular' in 'The Dark Side' - Tales of terror and the Supernatural.

Excerpts:

I have always had a solitary disposition, always been a dreamer, a sort of lone philosopher, kind to others, content with little, bearing neither bitterness toeards men, nor resentment towards heaven. I have always lived alone, as a result of a kind of uneasiness which comes over me when I am with other people. How can I explain this? I don't suppose I can explain it. It's not that I refuse to see people, or to chat to them, or to have dinner with friends, but when I've been with them for some time, even with the people I know best, I find that they weary me, tire me out, get on my nerves - and with a growing feeling of exasperation I long to see them go, or go away myself, so that I can be alone. This feeling I have is more than a desire: it is a compelling necessity.

I had been madly in love with her. Why do people fall in love? How strange it is that in the whole world you can see only one creature, have in your mind only one thought, in your heart only one desire, and on your lips only one name - a name which constantly rises like water from a spring, up to the lips from the depths of the soul, a name which you say over and over again, which you constantly murmur wherever you go, just as though it were the words of a prayer. I will not tell you our story. Love has only one story - and it is always the same. I had met her and loved her. That is all. And I had lived for a year in her tenderness, in her arms, in her caresses, in her gaze, in everything she wore, in everything she said, so utterly wrapped up and imprisoned in everything that was hers that I no longer knew whether it was day or night, whether I was dead or alive, whether I was on earth or in heaven.

- and never have I felt, as strongly as I did on that occasion, the struggle between the two beings which live within us, one willing something, the other resisting it, and each triumphing over the other in turn.