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Who Knows?
Book by Maupassant, Guy de
64 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1890
1 person is currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Guy de Maupassant
7,479 books3,042 followersHenri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer. He is one of the fathers of the modern short story. A protege of Flaubert, Maupassant's short stories are characterized by their economy of style and their efficient effortless dénouement. He also wrote six short novels. A number of his stories often denote the futility of war and the innocent civilians who get crushed in it - many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
May 27, 2017
Você chega do teatro e de repente vê seus móveis saindo da sua casa com as próprias pernas. Seu médico acha que você está com um lapso nervoso e te recomenda uma viagem .Você então viaja para a Itália e resolve visitar uma loja de móveis raros e percebe então que seus móveis estão todos lá. Não é pra ficar louco? Sim é, nosso personagem escreve de um sanatório , e por isso não da pra saber se o que ele fala aconteceu ou ele imaginou tudo!
October 17, 2013
I listened to this on the SFF Audio podcast. The story itself was 39 minutes (less at the 1.5 speed I listened at).
What's the story about? Well, it's either a story about a man's house robbing itself. Or a man's house being robbed with some paranormal thrown in. Or it might be about the protagonists descent into madness. Maybe there never was a house or furniture to rob at all. Who knows!
It becomes evident very quickly that there may be reason to doubt the reliability of the narrator, seeings that he's writing from an asylum that he's checked himself into - of course, if the narrator is so unreliable, perhaps his incarceration wasn't voluntary at all. Or maybe he only thinks he's in an asylum? Who Knows.
What genre is this anyway? You got it...who knows.
The discussion from the guys on the podcast was great as usual - better than the actual book.
3 stars
What's the story about? Well, it's either a story about a man's house robbing itself. Or a man's house being robbed with some paranormal thrown in. Or it might be about the protagonists descent into madness. Maybe there never was a house or furniture to rob at all. Who knows!
It becomes evident very quickly that there may be reason to doubt the reliability of the narrator, seeings that he's writing from an asylum that he's checked himself into - of course, if the narrator is so unreliable, perhaps his incarceration wasn't voluntary at all. Or maybe he only thinks he's in an asylum? Who Knows.
What genre is this anyway? You got it...who knows.
The discussion from the guys on the podcast was great as usual - better than the actual book.
3 stars
May 5, 2016
what happened?
who knows?
how did it happen?
who knows?
did it really happen?
who knows?
was the author a bit deranged?
who knows?
The story was just normal, but the couple fisrt pages in which the author described himself were great
who knows?
how did it happen?
who knows?
did it really happen?
who knows?
was the author a bit deranged?
who knows?
The story was just normal, but the couple fisrt pages in which the author described himself were great
July 10, 2019
Despite an interesting narrator and a unique plot, "Who Knows?" becomes too vague to be enjoyed as a mystery and too whimsical to be enjoyed as a horror story.
The unreliable narrator carries the short story far more than the plot does. His quirks are interesting and memorable, and his repition of the phrase giving the tale its title is good at building tension and unease without seeming artificial or forced. However, his unreliability also works against the novel, creating so much confusion that not much can be trusted (or cared about).
The plot revolves around a supernatural event that may or may not involve theft. I consider it a horror/mystery hybrid because of the intertwining of crime and fantasy. This supernatural event is the centerpiece of the short story. While I won't spoil the event, its presentation is likely the weakest aspect of "Who Knows?". While Maupassant is trying desperately to make it a horror scene with his descriptive powers, the scene ends up playing like something out of Carrol rather than Poe. The whimsical content of the scene is what I would consider 'anti-horror' and sucks any fights from the rest of "Who Knows?".
The tale doesn't work well as a mystery either. There is no clear solution, and the narrator is unreliable to the point that it is difficult to tell what is 'real' in the story.
I give "Who Knows?" two stars because it fails spectacularly in excelling at anything it attempts to do. I spare it a one-star because the narrator is interesting and (like all Maupassant I have read) it is immensely readable.
The unreliable narrator carries the short story far more than the plot does. His quirks are interesting and memorable, and his repition of the phrase giving the tale its title is good at building tension and unease without seeming artificial or forced. However, his unreliability also works against the novel, creating so much confusion that not much can be trusted (or cared about).
The plot revolves around a supernatural event that may or may not involve theft. I consider it a horror/mystery hybrid because of the intertwining of crime and fantasy. This supernatural event is the centerpiece of the short story. While I won't spoil the event, its presentation is likely the weakest aspect of "Who Knows?". While Maupassant is trying desperately to make it a horror scene with his descriptive powers, the scene ends up playing like something out of Carrol rather than Poe. The whimsical content of the scene is what I would consider 'anti-horror' and sucks any fights from the rest of "Who Knows?".
The tale doesn't work well as a mystery either. There is no clear solution, and the narrator is unreliable to the point that it is difficult to tell what is 'real' in the story.
I give "Who Knows?" two stars because it fails spectacularly in excelling at anything it attempts to do. I spare it a one-star because the narrator is interesting and (like all Maupassant I have read) it is immensely readable.
August 3, 2016
Very interesting story about a man's hyperactive furniture. The short story in itself is very well done but what is most interesting is the first couple of pages which describes, to a great deal, the authors own personality. The author did cut his own throat and ended up in an asylum where he died some time later.
February 20, 2020
Me encanta la descripción que hace el protagonista sobre su necesaria soledad y encierro, al igual que su incomprensión a los que tienen el hábito contrario.
July 12, 2023
Guy de Maupassant's "Who Knows?" is a terrifying short story that seems supernatural and a question of sanity.
Story in short-A strange kind of robbery that seems impossible.
➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
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My God! My God! I am going to write down at last what has happened to me. But how can I? How dare I? The thing is so bizarre, so inexplicable, so incomprehensible, so silly! If I were not perfectly sure of what I have seen, sure that there was not in my reasoning any defect, no error in my declarations,
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no lacune in the inflexible sequence of my observations, I should believe myself to be the dupe of a simple hallucination, the sport of a singular vision. After all, who knows? Yesterday I was in a private asylum, but I went there voluntarily, out of prudence and fear. Only one single human being knows my history, and that is the doctor of the said asylum. I am going to write to him. I really do not know why? To disembarrass myself? For I feel as though I were being weighed down by an intolerable nightmare.
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Let me explain. I have always been a recluse, a dreamer, a kind of isolated philosopher, easy-going, content with but little, harboring ill-feeling against no man, and without even having a grudge against heaven. I have constantly lived alone, consequently, a kind of torture takes hold of me when I find myself in the presence of others. How is this to be explained? I for one cannot. I am not averse from going out into the world, from conversation, from dining with friends, but when they are
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near me for any length of time, even the most intimate friends, they bore me, fatigue me, enervate me, and I experience an overwhelming torturing desire, to see them get up to depart, or to take themselves away, and to leave me by myself. That desire is more than a craving; it is an irresistible necessity. And if the presence of people, with whom I find myself, were to be continued; if I were compelled, not only to listen, but also to follow, for any length of time, their conversation, a serious accident would assuredly
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert
A gentleman comes home and hears and sees strange happenings, only to find out all his valuables are stolen. Afraid at the strange being he stays away from his home and later finds all his things in a small town. The police try to help him but things make that impossible and the gentleman soon hears his things are back home. He then goes to an asylum and still worries that he will be harassed there too.
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take place. What kind of accident? Ah! who knows? Perhaps a slight paralytic stroke? Yes, probably! I like so much to be alone that I cannot even endure the vicinage of other beings sleeping under the same roof. I cannot live in Paris, because when there I suffer the most acute agony. I lead a moral life, and am therefore tortured in my body and in my nerves by that immense crowd which swarms, which lives around even when it sleeps. Ah! the sleeping of others is more painful still than their conversation. And I
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can never find repose when I know, when I feel, that on the other side of a wall, several existences are interrupted by these regular eclipses of reason. Why am I thus? Who knows? The cause of it is perhaps very simple. I get tired very soon with everything that does not emanate from me. And there are many people in similar case. We are, on earth, two distinct races. Those who have need of others, whom others distract, engage, soothe, whom solitude harasses, pains, stupefies, like the forward movement of a terrible glacier, or the traversing of the desert; and those, on the contrary, whom others weary, tire, bore, silently torture, while isolation calms them, bathes them in the repose of independency, and plunges them into the humors of their own thoughts. In fine, there is here a normal, physical phenomenon. Some are constituted to live a life without themselves, others, to live a life within themselves. As for me, my exterior associations are abruptly and painfully short-lived,
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and, as they reach their limits, I experience in my whole body and in my whole intelligence, an intolerable uneasiness. As a result of this, I became attached, or rather, I had become much attached to inanimate objects, which have for me the importance of beings, and my house has become, had become, a world in which I lived an active and solitary life, surrounded by all manner of things, furniture, familiar knick-knacks, as sympathetic in my eyes as the visages of human beings. I
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had filled my mansion with them, little by little, I had adorned it with them, and I felt an inward content and satisfaction, was more happy than if I had been in the arms of a desirable female, whose wonted caresses had become a soothing and delightful necessity. I had had this house constructed in the center of a beautiful garden, which hid it from the public highways, and which was near the entrance to a city where I could find, on occasion, the resources of society, for which, at moments, I had a
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longing. All my domestics slept in a separate building which was situated at some considerable distance from my house, at the far end of the kitchen garden, which was surrounded by a high wall. The obscure envelopment of the nights, in the silence of my invisible and concealed habitation, buried under the leaves of the great trees, were so reposeful and so delicious, that I hesitated every evening, for several hours, before I could retire to my couch, in order to enjoy the solitude a little longer.
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One day Signad had been played at one of the city theaters. It was the first time that I had listened to that beautiful, musical, and fairy-like drama, and I had derived from it the liveliest pleasures. I returned home on foot, with a light step, my head full of sonorous phrases, and my mind haunted by delightful visions. It was night, the dead of night, and so dark that I could hardly distinguish the broad highway, and whence I stumbled into the ditch more than once. From the custom’s-house, at the barriers
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to my house, was about a mile, perhaps a little more, or a leisurely walk of about twenty minutes. It was one o’clock in the morning, one o’clock or maybe half-past one; the sky had by this time cleared somewhat and the crescent appeared, the gloomy crescent of the last quarter of the moon. The crescent of the first quarter is, that which rises about five or six o’clock in the evening; is clear, gay and fretted with silver; but the one which rises after midnight is reddish, sad and desolating; it is the true Sabbath crescent. Every prowler by night has made the same observation. The first, though as slender as a thread, throws a faint joyous light which rejoices the heart and lines the ground with distinct shadows; the last, sheds hardly a dying glimmer, and is so wan that it occasions hardly any shadows. In the distance, I perceived the somber mass of my garden, and I know not why I was seized with a feeling of uneasiness at the idea of going inside. I slowed my pace, and walked very softly, the thick cluster
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of trees having the appearance of a tomb in which my house was buried. I opened my outer gate, and I entered the long avenue of sycamores, which ran in the direction of the house, arranged vault-wise like a high tunnel, traversing opaque masses, and winding round the turf lawns, on which baskets of flowers, in the pale darkness, could be indistinctly discerned. In approaching the house, I was seized by a strange feeling, I could hear nothing, I stood still. In the
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trees there was not even a breath of air. “What is the matter with me then?” I said to myself. For ten years I had entered and re-entered in the same way, without ever experiencing the least inquietude. I never had any fear at nights. The sight of a man, a marauder, or a thief, would have thrown me into a fit of anger, and I would have rushed at him without any hesitation. Moreover, I was armed, I had my revolver. But I did not touch it, for I was anxious to resist that feeling of dread with which I was permeated.
Story in short-A strange kind of robbery that seems impossible.
➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
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My God! My God! I am going to write down at last what has happened to me. But how can I? How dare I? The thing is so bizarre, so inexplicable, so incomprehensible, so silly! If I were not perfectly sure of what I have seen, sure that there was not in my reasoning any defect, no error in my declarations,
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 33600
no lacune in the inflexible sequence of my observations, I should believe myself to be the dupe of a simple hallucination, the sport of a singular vision. After all, who knows? Yesterday I was in a private asylum, but I went there voluntarily, out of prudence and fear. Only one single human being knows my history, and that is the doctor of the said asylum. I am going to write to him. I really do not know why? To disembarrass myself? For I feel as though I were being weighed down by an intolerable nightmare.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 33604
Let me explain. I have always been a recluse, a dreamer, a kind of isolated philosopher, easy-going, content with but little, harboring ill-feeling against no man, and without even having a grudge against heaven. I have constantly lived alone, consequently, a kind of torture takes hold of me when I find myself in the presence of others. How is this to be explained? I for one cannot. I am not averse from going out into the world, from conversation, from dining with friends, but when they are
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 33607
near me for any length of time, even the most intimate friends, they bore me, fatigue me, enervate me, and I experience an overwhelming torturing desire, to see them get up to depart, or to take themselves away, and to leave me by myself. That desire is more than a craving; it is an irresistible necessity. And if the presence of people, with whom I find myself, were to be continued; if I were compelled, not only to listen, but also to follow, for any length of time, their conversation, a serious accident would assuredly
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert
A gentleman comes home and hears and sees strange happenings, only to find out all his valuables are stolen. Afraid at the strange being he stays away from his home and later finds all his things in a small town. The police try to help him but things make that impossible and the gentleman soon hears his things are back home. He then goes to an asylum and still worries that he will be harassed there too.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 33611
take place. What kind of accident? Ah! who knows? Perhaps a slight paralytic stroke? Yes, probably! I like so much to be alone that I cannot even endure the vicinage of other beings sleeping under the same roof. I cannot live in Paris, because when there I suffer the most acute agony. I lead a moral life, and am therefore tortured in my body and in my nerves by that immense crowd which swarms, which lives around even when it sleeps. Ah! the sleeping of others is more painful still than their conversation. And I
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 33615
can never find repose when I know, when I feel, that on the other side of a wall, several existences are interrupted by these regular eclipses of reason. Why am I thus? Who knows? The cause of it is perhaps very simple. I get tired very soon with everything that does not emanate from me. And there are many people in similar case. We are, on earth, two distinct races. Those who have need of others, whom others distract, engage, soothe, whom solitude harasses, pains, stupefies, like the forward movement of a terrible glacier, or the traversing of the desert; and those, on the contrary, whom others weary, tire, bore, silently torture, while isolation calms them, bathes them in the repose of independency, and plunges them into the humors of their own thoughts. In fine, there is here a normal, physical phenomenon. Some are constituted to live a life without themselves, others, to live a life within themselves. As for me, my exterior associations are abruptly and painfully short-lived,
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 33622
and, as they reach their limits, I experience in my whole body and in my whole intelligence, an intolerable uneasiness. As a result of this, I became attached, or rather, I had become much attached to inanimate objects, which have for me the importance of beings, and my house has become, had become, a world in which I lived an active and solitary life, surrounded by all manner of things, furniture, familiar knick-knacks, as sympathetic in my eyes as the visages of human beings. I
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 33626
had filled my mansion with them, little by little, I had adorned it with them, and I felt an inward content and satisfaction, was more happy than if I had been in the arms of a desirable female, whose wonted caresses had become a soothing and delightful necessity. I had had this house constructed in the center of a beautiful garden, which hid it from the public highways, and which was near the entrance to a city where I could find, on occasion, the resources of society, for which, at moments, I had a
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 33630
longing. All my domestics slept in a separate building which was situated at some considerable distance from my house, at the far end of the kitchen garden, which was surrounded by a high wall. The obscure envelopment of the nights, in the silence of my invisible and concealed habitation, buried under the leaves of the great trees, were so reposeful and so delicious, that I hesitated every evening, for several hours, before I could retire to my couch, in order to enjoy the solitude a little longer.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 33633
One day Signad had been played at one of the city theaters. It was the first time that I had listened to that beautiful, musical, and fairy-like drama, and I had derived from it the liveliest pleasures. I returned home on foot, with a light step, my head full of sonorous phrases, and my mind haunted by delightful visions. It was night, the dead of night, and so dark that I could hardly distinguish the broad highway, and whence I stumbled into the ditch more than once. From the custom’s-house, at the barriers
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 33637
to my house, was about a mile, perhaps a little more, or a leisurely walk of about twenty minutes. It was one o’clock in the morning, one o’clock or maybe half-past one; the sky had by this time cleared somewhat and the crescent appeared, the gloomy crescent of the last quarter of the moon. The crescent of the first quarter is, that which rises about five or six o’clock in the evening; is clear, gay and fretted with silver; but the one which rises after midnight is reddish, sad and desolating; it is the true Sabbath crescent. Every prowler by night has made the same observation. The first, though as slender as a thread, throws a faint joyous light which rejoices the heart and lines the ground with distinct shadows; the last, sheds hardly a dying glimmer, and is so wan that it occasions hardly any shadows. In the distance, I perceived the somber mass of my garden, and I know not why I was seized with a feeling of uneasiness at the idea of going inside. I slowed my pace, and walked very softly, the thick cluster
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 33644
of trees having the appearance of a tomb in which my house was buried. I opened my outer gate, and I entered the long avenue of sycamores, which ran in the direction of the house, arranged vault-wise like a high tunnel, traversing opaque masses, and winding round the turf lawns, on which baskets of flowers, in the pale darkness, could be indistinctly discerned. In approaching the house, I was seized by a strange feeling, I could hear nothing, I stood still. In the
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 33648
trees there was not even a breath of air. “What is the matter with me then?” I said to myself. For ten years I had entered and re-entered in the same way, without ever experiencing the least inquietude. I never had any fear at nights. The sight of a man, a marauder, or a thief, would have thrown me into a fit of anger, and I would have rushed at him without any hesitation. Moreover, I was armed, I had my revolver. But I did not touch it, for I was anxious to resist that feeling of dread with which I was permeated.
December 27, 2021
Many readers fail in their task of unearthing the roots of horror in this intriguing and odd tale. Mostly because the great majority never considers the pangs of mental illness as one of the most intense sources of terror, and seeks instead some sort of monstrous creature to account for the strange events in the plot. Who Knows? is one such instance; a story which focuses on the mental deterioration of its unreliable narrator.
With a great deal of excitement, an extraordinary report of traveling furniture, and most importantly a peculiar temperament, the narrative leads quite naturally to the possibility of mental deterioration in the narrator. After all, a rich man could have managed with great ease the feat of conveying his own furniture from one location to another, and under as many circumstances as there are possibilities. The absence of witnesses to all his extraordinary incidents corroborates this view point even more so. Thus, Who Knows? is an enjoyable tale of psychological rather than supernatural horror.
With a great deal of excitement, an extraordinary report of traveling furniture, and most importantly a peculiar temperament, the narrative leads quite naturally to the possibility of mental deterioration in the narrator. After all, a rich man could have managed with great ease the feat of conveying his own furniture from one location to another, and under as many circumstances as there are possibilities. The absence of witnesses to all his extraordinary incidents corroborates this view point even more so. Thus, Who Knows? is an enjoyable tale of psychological rather than supernatural horror.
November 27, 2021
A rather fun little story about a man who may or may not be losing his mind.
Interesting way of doing it.
Interesting way of doing it.
June 7, 2022
(3.5 stars) This was an interesting read. It definitely reminded me of Beauty and the Beast with the walking furniture. I also liked the mystery part of it, but it wasn't too exciting or special.
August 20, 2023
3.25⭐
AKA: Who Can Tell?, Who Can Know?, Qui sait?
The narrator writes from inside an asylum, where he has committed himself and now recounts what has transpired earlier. We learn that the narrator, a self-proclaimed recluse is a man who has always felt uneasy in the presence of others but has a love of furniture, which he used to decorate his house with. One day, the furniture disappeared under mysterious circumstances, actually walking and prancing off by themselves right under the observation of the owner. Later he comes across them again in the most unexpected place which explains the very strange not to say supernatural events that had led to his admitting himself into an institute for mentally disturbed persons. Yet he is still a long way from discovering how they got there in the first place.
AKA: Who Can Tell?, Who Can Know?, Qui sait?
The narrator writes from inside an asylum, where he has committed himself and now recounts what has transpired earlier. We learn that the narrator, a self-proclaimed recluse is a man who has always felt uneasy in the presence of others but has a love of furniture, which he used to decorate his house with. One day, the furniture disappeared under mysterious circumstances, actually walking and prancing off by themselves right under the observation of the owner. Later he comes across them again in the most unexpected place which explains the very strange not to say supernatural events that had led to his admitting himself into an institute for mentally disturbed persons. Yet he is still a long way from discovering how they got there in the first place.
December 23, 2023
This seems to have been written during the first drafts of The Horla. Like in John-Antoine Nau's Enemy Force the character is in a insane asylum since the start, recounting his fantastic ordeal that lead him to supposedly commit himself voluntarily.
July 22, 2024
I rather enjoyed this unusual tale told by unreliable narrator. Is he mad? Delusional? Mistaken? Or maybe it did really happen. After watching the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast, I can get behind the fanciful idea of walking furniture!
October 5, 2024
A deeply unsettling piece of classic weirdness about a man who cannot stand human company who forms deep emotional connections with his furniture, only to have them take on a deeply horrible animation.
December 17, 2022
3.5 stars
November 18, 2023
I listened to this as part of the Classic Tales of Horror - 500+ Stories. It was very enjoyable 2023
June 21, 2024
This confused me because I read it literally the first time. I was like huh? But now I kinda get it like 50% ?? 😭🤸♀️
August 4, 2024
The protagonist is just like me fr fr fr. And the idea of throwing hands with a piano or a desk as they try to escape your house is. Something.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 7, 2025
Beauty and the beast but it’s just the bit about the furniture
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 14, 2025
fun spooky short read about furniture coming alive that I discovered after hearing a film is being made of it
December 5, 2014
Käteen sopiva pikku kirjanen sopisi helppolukuisuutensa ansiosta hyvin kauhugenren opetukseen. Novelli kertoo miehestä, jonka huonekalut lähtevät ns. kävelemään. Löytyykö rikollista ja ken on syypää, kukapa tietää?
July 18, 2016
What just happened?
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews