The Moon and Sixpence is a masterpiece by the great British playwright and novelist Maugham, written in 1919. Published for more than 100 years, it has become a best-selling 70 million copies of the best-selling novel. The author uses the painter Gauguin to create the prototype, with a cold brushwork, compassion, to describe for us the story of how a seemingly mediocre soul awakens and runs away, and strives for a lifetime for dreams. The novel not only expresses the author's profound thinking on ideals and reality, body and soul, human nature and love, society and self, but also the epitome and portrayal of the life of a genius and the life of the general public.
The author said: The ground was full of sixpence, but he looked up at the moon. The moon in the book represents the unattainable dream and spiritual world, and the sixpence symbolizes secular society and money. Whether to "moon" or "sixpence" seems to be a problem that plagues most people's lives. In order to chase his dreams, Charles, the hero of this book, chose a path that was too cruel, he gave up everything he had, completely disregarded the constraints of morality and the comfort of life, and lived a pure spiritual life, which deeply shocked me. The author told me in the most unbearable way: following my heart and living my life in the way I like is the greatest success.
| synopsis
The story goes like this: Charles, a London stockbroker who has passed the age of confusion, is a wealthy middle class in Britain, and can be described as a successful career, a happy family, and a stable life. Suddenly, one day, he abandoned his wife and son, went to Paris to study painting, and dreamed of becoming a professional painter. In a foreign country, he had no economic income, was poor and sick, and even died of illness, but thanks to the help of a Dutch painter, he gradually recovered, and as a result, in order to create a nude painting, he hooked up with the painter's wife, causing the life-saving benefactor to die.
After encountering all kinds of difficulties and wandering around, Charles wandered to an isolated Tahiti island, married a local indigenous woman, lived in seclusion in the mountains and painted, and created many masterpieces that shocked later generations. Later, he contracted leprosy and lost his sight in both eyes, and before he died, he completed the giant mural, but left a last word for his wife to burn the mural after his death.
| ideals and realities
This incomprehensible madman in the eyes of others, the cold and selfish negative man, the ungrateful wicked, the obsessive fool, will be so extreme and profound in the interpretation of the fall and the beautiful, the humble and the great, the hatred and the love, the complexity and purity. So much so that the reader, including me, was shocked and confused: Can't I paint at home? The pursuit of art is the pursuit of art, why do we have to deviate from the world and abandon everything? Can't the moon and sixpence have both?
Leaving aside Charles's style of behavior, just looking at his pursuit of ideals, it is indeed worth thinking about. I think the author is not encouraging us to be like Charles, desperate for the ideal, but to explore a possibility of a pure, extreme situation, the human spiritual world, the author only expresses in this way the affirmation of the pursuit of the spiritual world of the self, living in the self, and the protagonist Charles (or Gauguin) for the pursuit of ideals show a deep admiration for the bravery, fearlessness, persistence and incomparable purity of the realm.
In life, I want to be a moon knight, and I want to pick up sixpence at my fingertips. I want ideals, and I want ordinary happiness. I try to balance the two in order to gain inner peace. Later, I gradually found that it was too difficult to achieve my ideals. Because of the helplessness of reality, the shackles of the world, the coercion of public opinion, and their own timidity and laziness, the result is that the ideal is getting farther and farther away, and eventually becomes a distant dream. Therefore, I had to stop in my heart and comfort myself: "Fish and bear paws cannot be combined, so as I am, looking up at the moon in my heart and paying attention to pennies on a daily basis, it is enough to do so." "Then continue to live in mediocrity." This is also the choice of most people.
Few people, like Charles, suddenly give up all without warning, abandon all the rules of the world, and exist simply, purely, exclusively for the ideal. I only want ideals, not a living, it's his choice. As a mature man over forty years old, why would he suddenly make such a crazy move?
Charles explains: "When I was a child, I wanted to be a painter, but my father told me to go into business. He said that there is no future in studying art. So he had to give up. Although many years have passed, the depths of his heart still burn with the deep desire and creative instinct of painting. And this longing and instinct grew wildly with the passage of time, leaving him powerless to resist.
"I tell you, I have to paint, I can't help myself. A man falls into the water, it doesn't matter if he swims well or not, he has to struggle anyway, or he will drown.
It can be said that he was manipulated by the captivity of his dreams, and the moment he chose to paint, it seemed to open the bad luck of his life. He set aside all worldly fetters and pounced on his fate without hesitation. Because of his ideals, he became deprived and adrift. Because of his ideals, he became ruthless and selfish, ruthless and unrighteous, with no sense of morality. In this adventure, he went through hardships, but always followed his heart. Dare to give up, accept it calmly, and persevere enough. Be brave to be yourself, not afraid of the world's vision, and live up to the enthusiasm and dreams of the heart. In the end, I achieved myself, lived my life in the way I liked, and realized the meaning of life.
| society and self
Who doesn't want to have a little pursuit in their own life, more surprises? Who doesn't want to be themselves and live the way they like? On weekdays, we work and study and live, "giving ourselves to busyness, what we get is solid, but it is not real." As the author says, "Ordinary people are not the kind of people they want to do, but the kind of people they have to do." The author uses the choice of a brave person to live a life for us that we have never had the courage to live.
For most people, perhaps being grounded is more reassuring than being real. In the book, the captain says to Charles, "The way you seek inner peace is art, and I am life." Choosing ideal or reality is never the right answer. "It all depends on how one sees the meaning of life, on what obligations he thinks he should have to society, and what he has demands of himself."
Because of being true to himself, the brave Charles is lonely on the road to the pursuit of art, and this loneliness is reflected in people's incomprehension, contempt, ridicule and even insults. "How many people in this world understand themselves, and how many people can they understand?" We are islands in the world, living in the troubles of the world. We live in masks, pandering to universal values in order to integrate into society, and we are accustomed to using universal values to measure what others do.
From childhood to adulthood, the people around them constantly tell themselves that they must work hard and be a person with a good reputation. In their eyes, indifferent to fame and fortune and indisputable with the world, it seems to be a waste of their own lives. Having a career and status, or having money and power and a beautiful woman, it seems to be a successful life. In the adult world, people are more about looking at where you stand, what you have achieved, and then choose your attitude towards you. No one looks at the hardships you've put in, no one cares what you really want in your heart, and no one cares if you're happy or not. After all, the world is someone else's, and life is your own. I am happy or unhappy, happy and unhappy, and it is the most real feeling for myself.
As for success or not, everyone's life pursuit is different, and the requirements are different. Success in your eyes is not the success I want, and success is not universal. Some people rush to the field at night, and some people resign and return to their hometowns, and there is no need to judge whether it is right or wrong. There is no right life in life, and we do not have to live in the expectations and evaluation standards of others. Only by jumping out of the world's definition of the universal value of success can we see our own hearts and go with the flow. Living your life the way you like is the most real and meaningful life.
After reading this book, I have a feeling of sudden enlightenment. The author said: "I have lived an ordinary life with all my strength". That's a reflection of most of us. Accept the ordinary self, live out the self, and may we all be happy and happy people.
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