Page 1 About the Author
William Somerset Maugham (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English novelist and playwright. Representative works include the drama "Circle", the novel "The Shackles of Life", "The Moon and Sixpence", the short story collection "The Tremor of the Leaf", "Akin" and so on.
Born in Paris on 25 January 1874, Maugham graduated from secondary school and graduated from the University of Heidelberg in Germany. From 1892 to 1897 he studied medicine in London and qualified as a surgeon. In 1897, he published his first novel, Lisa of Lambeth. In 1915, he published the novel "The Shackles of Life". During World War I, Maugham went to France to join the field first aid team, and soon entered the British intelligence service to collect enemy information in Geneva; later sent an envoy to Russia to dissuade Russia from withdrawing from the war, and had contact with Kerensky, the head of the Provisional Government.
In 1916, Maugham traveled to the South Pacific and has since made several trips to the Far East. In 1920, he went to China and wrote a travelogue "On the Screen of China" and a long novel "The Veil" with China as the background. Later, he went to Latin America and India. In 1919, the novel "The Moon and Sixpence" came out.
Maugham settled on the Mediterranean coast of France in 1928. During World War II, he went to Britain and the United States to publicize the joint resistance to Germany, and wrote a novel "Blade". In 1930, the novel "Eating and Drinking" was published. In 1948, the novel Catarina, set in 16th-century Spain, was published, along with works such as memoirs and literary criticism.
His father was a lawyer and was working at the British Embassy in France. When Maugham Jr. was less than ten years old, his parents died one after another, and he was sent back to England to be raised by his uncle. After Maugham entered the Royal College of Canterbury, due to his short stature and severe stuttering, he was often bullied and tortured by older children, and sometimes he was humiliated by winter baking pedantry for no reason. The lonely and miserable childhood life cast a painful shadow on his young mind and cultivated his lonely, sensitive and introverted personality. His early experiences had a profound impact on his worldview and literary creation.
After the outbreak of World War I, Maugham, 40, joined France's Red Cross first aid corps. While serving on the Western Front, he met 22-year-old American Girald Huxton. Huxton is outgoing and energetic, complementing Maugham, who is unsociable due to stuttering. Maugham hired Haxton as his personal secretary, and the partnership remained until Haxton's death in 1944.
In 1915, Maugham gave birth to a daughter with Charity Dr. Thomas Barnado's daughter, Siri Wilkam. Siri was a married woman at the time, but she divorced her husband Henry Wilkam the following year and married Maugham. But after marriage, Maugham spent most of his time living with Huxton. In the next few years, the gay couple traveled hand in hand and toured China, India, Latin America and other places.
Maugham's title as the "world traveler" also derives from this. During these trips, Huxton was like Maugham's eyes and ears, and in his interactions with various people and so on during the journey, he collected a large number of "anecdotes" for Maugham, and these stories later became the source of Maugham's novel creation. In 1927, Siri finally couldn't bear this snub and divorced Maugham.
In 1954, the Queen conferred on him the title of "Honorary Attendant" and he became a member of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1959, Maugham made his last trip to the Far East. He died in France on 16 December 1965.
Page 2 Summary of contents
"The Moon and Sixpence" is mainly about: Strickland is a securities broker working in London, he has a wealthy and happy family: his wife is beautiful, he loves vanity, and his two children are healthy and happy. Logically, he should be content with this kind of worldly happiness, even though this life is vulgar and peaceful.
But, in the 17th year of their marriage, he abruptly left home for Paris, abandoning a career and family that seemed good to outsiders. Just when people thought that he had run away because of an affair, people discovered the fact that he was only painting.
At this time, Strickland did not have any basis in painting, he just loved to draw. To outsiders, he was simply insane, and his life began to become embarrassing, and he nearly died of hunger and disease several times. His paintings were also completely unsightly, always destroying the original things, and no one would buy his paintings except for a crappy painter, Brans strathstoff, who regarded him as a god, and in fact he never sold them easily.
He wandered non-stop and eventually came to Tahiti and married an indigenous girl, Aita. At this time he seemed content, and he had an indigenous man as his wife, who lived in isolation, where he painted every day. Unfortunately, he soon contracted leprosy, and a year before his death he became blind. Aita took care of him until he finished his giant mural and died of festering body. His wife burned the frescoed house according to his last words, leaving not even a single piece of wood.
In his novels, Maugham delved into the contradictions and interactions between life and art. The escapist theme revealed by the novel coincided with the pursuit of many in the West and became a popular novel of the 20th century.
Page 3 Background of writing
The Moon and Sixpence is one of three masterpieces by the British writer Maugham. The work shows genius, nature and material reality, and the inseparable contradictions in marriage and family. The book uses the first-person account of the protagonist Strickland's pursuit of his spiritual world from the perspective of a bystander. The contradiction between the spiritual world and the real world runs through the book. The intense collision of the two worlds and the depiction of a breakthrough from the perspective of postcolonialism highlight the author's emotional tendencies and his admiration for the state of freedom and the flogging of the confinement of reality.
The Moon and Sixpence was written in 1919. The protagonist Strickland is based on the French painter Gauguin. Gauguin believed that the essence of painting was something independent of nature, so he left his family and traveled and painted on the islands of the South Pacific. At that time, The social contradictions in Europe were becoming increasingly acute, facing the severe situation of being in ruins after the end of the First World War, people frantically carried out social activities to obtain benefits and improve their status by making friends with celebrities and business tycoons, and people were very confused about the future and depressed and pessimistic in their hearts. Gauguin's actions and terrible social realities inspired a wave of escapism among the underclass in Europe. It was in this context that Maugham created The Moon and Sixpence.
The plot of "The Moon and Sixpence" is based on the life of the French post-impressionist painter Gauguin, the protagonist Charles Strickland, a former securities broker, who suddenly responded to the call of his heart after middle age, gave up everything to live with the indigenous people in Tahiti in the South Pacific, gained inspiration, and created many artistic masterpieces. In his novels, Maugham delved into the contradictions and interactions between life and art, and the escapist themes revealed in the novel coincided with the pursuit of many in the West and became popular novels of the 20th century.
The novel is based on the French Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. Sixpence was the smallest unit of British currency at the time, and a friend joked with Maugham that people often forget the sixpence under their feet when looking up at the moon, and Maugham thought it was very interesting and gave it the title, which was a joke. The moon represents the lofty ideal, and the sixpence represents reality.
Page 4 Reader Comments
Charles Tricoff was a successful securities dealer who, after eight years of marriage, suddenly chose to abandon his family to study painting in Paris, just to pursue the dream in his heart. When Charles returned home after decades, faced with the trivialities of life, did he have so many moments in his heart that he wanted to escape? Is he also confused? Are the bits and pieces of the people in front of you really belong to you? What he is doing is the desired self, or the self in the eyes of others. And is his life the way he should live, or what he thinks he is?
Each of us encounters Strickland's general moments of choice in life, and we all feel confused in a seemingly arranged life. Should we abandon the present moment and look for poetry and distant places? Stability is the greatest temptation of mediocrity, the key point that makes us shrink our hands and feet.
We are afraid of winners taking all and leaving ourselves with nothing. We are willing to succumb to the intransigence of the present and give up poetry and distant fields. It's not that we don't want to, it's just that we don't dare. How many people have extraordinary qualities and are willing to gamble on the path of life? Strickland was one of them, business was not the most important thing for him, and the pursuit of artistic dreams in his heart was the ultimate goal he was striving for.
In Maugham's writing, the 40-year-old Strickland has long passed the age of impulsiveness, and others are looking for stability, but he is chasing bad luck. As the writer Liu Yu said: "Those who are captured by dreams are chasing their bad luck." In his eyes, the value of his life is to fly like a fly, give up all desires, catch up with his dreams - to paint a good picture. He was impoverished in Paris, seriously ill, and nearly died. Later, he fell into the streets and became a dock worker. It is such a crazy person, seeing through the city, seeing through desire, seeing through class concepts, seeing through fate, and finally holding the flame of dreams and setting off a grand firework.
Page 5 Quotes
1. To pursue his dreams is to chase his own doom, and in the street full of sixpence, he looks up and sees the moonlight.
2. I did not yet understand how contradictory human nature was, nor how much contrivance there was in sincerity, how much meanness there was in the sublime, or how virtue could be found even in evil.
3. I tried my best to live an ordinary life.
4. Writers are more concerned with understanding human nature than judging human nature.
5. Ordinary people are not the kind of people they want to do, but the kind of people they are forced to do.
(To be continued)
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