For modern people who are physically trapped in the cubicle, entangled in running away or lying flat, Maugham's "The Moon and Sixpence" is like a spiritual fable.
The story is still the first-person bystander perspective that Maugham is good at, similar to the common "I have a friend..." on the Internet today, and through the cold eyes of "I", The story of Stryrank is presented to us.
At the beginning of the story, the reader knows through the narrative of "I" that Stryrank has long been famous and is regarded as a great contemporary artist. "I" felt this and recalled my association with Strank. Many years ago, "I" first entered the social world as a newcomer to the London literary circle, and through the introduction of friends, I met Mrs. Stranker, who was elegant and liked to make friends with literary and artistic people. So "I" first knew a little about Styrank by hearing about it. In the eyes of others, the securities broker Styrank "is just a stuffy jar" and "what literature and art, he is not interested at all", in his wife's account, Stry Rank is "not at all literary, downright a beggar, very vulgar". Later, "I" finally meet Stillrank at a family dinner and find that this is a "dull, boring" person with no "sense of existence". This description naturally makes the subsequent twist even more astonishing.
Yes, it is this ordinary middle-aged man who is not conspicuous and does not show a trace of literary and artistic atmosphere, but at the age of 40, he abandoned his family and turned a blind eye to the seventeen-year marriage. But he didn't elope with his lover, as people think, but for a ridiculous reason— "I want to paint." For ordinary people, this is a confusing reason. The dialogue between "me" and Styrank is nothing less than ordinary people talking to "crazy people". "I" appealed to reason, analyzed the possibility of success for Styrank according to secular utilitarian principles, and pointed out that although miracles may occur, "the probability is negligible" and that it is not worth abandoning a decent life for this purpose. But Stryrank's response to this was simply "I had to paint." I can't help myself. People fall into the water, and it doesn't matter whether they swim well or not, they either swim ashore or drown. ”
For the rest of Sterling's life, money and women were no longer important, he "turned a blind eye to all things on earth, and the apparitions of the dimension that disturbed his soul at that moment attracted all his attention." He lived in isolation, painted like a madman in the remote island of Tahiti, and eventually fell ill and died. Before his death, he instructed his native wife to burn his paintings, "All that is desired in a lifetime, and no regrets in death." He created a world, saw it as beautiful as expected, and then destroyed it in pride and contempt."
To a certain extent, Maugham portrays this Enchanted, life-like Stranker like an allegorical figure. Of the sixpence that could be seen everywhere, he chose the moon that was out of reach without consequence or in return. There have been many interpretations of this, mostly focusing on the opposition between ideal and reality. His story seems to require us to think about how to choose between the present and the poetry and the distant.
But if that were the only thing to do, Maugham wouldn't have to spend pen and ink describing the reactions of people after Strylank's death. On top of the whole story, there is actually a shell of Stryrank and the world, that is, how people perceive Stryrank. When Surely, Mrs. Striank and the others were silent when they finally learned of Styrank's ending, and then someone commented that "God's millstone spins slowly, but grinds it finely." In their hearts, Stryrank is still the unethical, inhuman scum, who eventually ends up reaping the rewards for his tragic death on a desert island. In this regard, "I" put up with the words that had reached the lips, and in the eyes of "I", these ordinary people could not understand at all, nor were they qualified to comment on Styrank. But the public was fascinated by Styrank's deviance. Stray Rank's decisive gesture of ignoring rules and ignoring fame and fortune for artistic ideals, while attracting material controversy, also made him a legend, and eventually rose to fame, from a "beast" in the eyes of the public to a god-like existence. In Maugham's view, these people also did not really understand the value of Stryrank's work, so after Stryrank's son established a biography for his father and tried to portray him as a righteous gentleman, the sale price of Stryrank's paintings plummeted. So, I think Maugham actually satirizes everyone, including the reader, for not being able to really understand genius and its art.
Maugham abandoned medicine and literature in the hope of making a name for himself in the literary world. But over the years, his novels have never become popular. Until the time of writing, he was still not recognized by critics in his fiction writing. In this book, he writes this passage in the tone of the narrator "I": "A writer, who should take solace from the pleasure of creation, should also vent himself and liberate himself under the weight of his own thoughts, and reward himself; at the same time, he must treat everything other than writing coldly, stand idly by, and be indifferent to all praise or condemnation, success or failure, and be calm and calm." This can be seen somewhat as an intertext with the image of Stryrank. The real Maugham could not so decisively abandon the worldly fame and fortune, and Stryrank probably included Maugham's imagination of another extreme possibility of his own life. Whether it is life or enchantment, people have their own choices.