Chapter 123 postscript

William Somerset Maugham (William Somerset Maugham), a famous modern British writer, began his long creation in 1897 with the novel "Liza of Lambeth" depicting life in the slums of London career.He has written a lot in his life, involving and making achievements in various literary fields except poetry.He has written 20 novels, more than 100 short stories, and 30 plays. In addition, he has written travel notes, memoirs, and literary criticism.His works, especially his novels and short stories, are simple in writing, clear in context, distinctive in character and ups and downs in plot, and have a considerable number of readers in all walks of life.His works have been translated into various languages, and many novels have also been put on the screen.He is one of the most popular novelists in the first half of the twentieth century.

Somerset Maugham is a modern western writer familiar to Chinese readers.His works were introduced as early as the 1930s and 1940s; films adapted from his novels, such as "Debt" (that is), "The Razor's Edge" (that is), were screened in my country before liberation.In recent years, domestic magazines have published some of his short stories one after another, and Chinese translations of famous novels and novels have also been published one after another, which has aroused the interest of readers in our country.Now, we have the opportunity to introduce Maugham's most important work to readers, which not only fulfills our long-cherished wish for many years, but also helps everyone to further understand this writer.This article makes a rough introduction to Maugham and his masterpiece, and discusses some very immature opinions for the sake of enlightenment.

Somerset Maugham was born in Paris on January 25, 1874.His father was a lawyer and worked at the British Embassy in France at the time.Little Maugham was under ten years old, his mother and father died successively, and he was sent back to England to be raised by his uncle Henry Maugham.Henry Maugham, vicar of Whitstable, Kent, was selfish and greedy, and treated his nephew with indifference bordering on brutality.After Maugham entered the Royal College of Canterbury, his situation was even more unfortunate.Due to his short stature and severe stutter, he is often bullied and tortured by older children, and sometimes humiliated for no reason by Dong Heng's pedantic.The lonely and desolate childhood life cast a painful shadow on his immature soul, and cultivated his withdrawn, sensitive, and introverted character.His childhood experience had a profound impact on his world outlook and literary creation.

In early 1892, instead of following his uncle's arrangement to study theology in Oxford, he went to Heidelberg University in Germany to study for a year.There, he came into contact with the philosophical thoughts of the German historian of philosophy Kuno Fischer and the new drama trend represented by Ibsen.In the same year, he returned to the UK and worked as a trainee in an accounting firm in London for six weeks, and then went to St. Thomas' Medical College in London to study medicine.The five-year medical practice not only gave him the opportunity to understand the living conditions of the people at the bottom, but also taught him to dissect life and society with the cold and sharp eyes like a scalpel.Somerset Maugham once said: "This experience is very precious to me. For a writer, I don't know what better exercise than practicing medicine for several years." Shasha was written based on what he saw and heard during his medical practice.

From 1897, Maugham abandoned medicine and devoted himself to literary creation.Over the next few years he wrote several novels, but none of them could, in Maugham's own words, "set the Thames on fire."He turned to drama creation, achieved success, and became a smash hit playwright. The London stage actually performed four of his plays at the same time.His tenth play, "Lady Frederick," ran for a year.It is said that only the famous playwright George Bernard Shaw can match this unprecedented grand occasion.But the bitter past, smoldering in his heart like a nightmare, does not allow him to have a moment of peace, and requires him to express and create more and more strongly.He decided to temporarily suspend the creation of plays and spend two years devoting himself to writing a long-awaited novel.

During the First World War, Maugham first rescued the wounded on the Belgian front line, and then worked in the British intelligence agency. He has been to Switzerland, Russia and the Far East.This experience provided material for his later writing spy novel "Eshenden".After the war, he revisited the Far East and the islands in the South Pacific; he visited my country in 1920 and wrote a volume of "China Experience Records".Maugham settled in the Riviera on the Mediterranean Sea from 1928 until the Nazis invaded in 1940 when he left in a hurry. The period between the two wars was the period when Maugham was at his most creative.In the 1920s and early 1930s, he wrote a series of comedies that exposed the intrigues, intrigues, moral depravities of the upper class, and satirized the absurdities of the leisure class, such as Weeks and Days, People Nobler Than Us and The Steadfast Wife "Wait.These three plays are recognized as the best among Maugham's plays."Xie Pei", completed in 1933, was his last play.Maugham's dramatic works have compact and tortuous plots, fierce and reasonable conflicts; the characters written are not much ink but vivid and prominent; the dialogues are vivid and natural, humorous and playful, making people feel fresh and powerful.But generally speaking, the depth of content and characterization is not as good as his novels and short stories, although his novels are not profound either.The important novels of this period include: through the description of a painter who abandoned Western civilization, came to the South China Sea to live with the indigenous people, and created gorgeous and colorful paintings, reflecting the restraint of modern Western civilization and killing the artist's personality and creation; "Literary Dean" and the descriptions of various characters around it, "Pleasure and Pleasure" which vividly portrayed the ridiculous and despicable phenomena in the literary world at that time;Short stories occupy an important position in Maugham's creative activities.The style of his short stories is close to that of Maupassant, with rigorous structure, natural ups and downs, concise language and eloquent narration.The writer tried his best to avoid making comments in his works, but through ingenious artistic treatment, let the characters show their inner personality during the unfolding of the plot.

During World War II, Maugham went to the United States and spent six years in South Carolina, New York, and Wynyard Island.Published a novel in 1944.In this work, the writer tries to reveal the conflict between spirituality and materialism through a story about a young man exploring the philosophy of life.After the novel was published, the response was enthusiastic, especially welcomed by the British and American active-duty soldiers who were in the flames of war at that time. In 1946, Maugham returned to the French Riviera.In 1948, he wrote his last novel "Catalina".Since then, I have been limited to writing memoirs and literary criticism, and at the same time sorting out my old works.Maugham enjoyed a high reputation in his later years. Oxford University in England and University of Toulouse in France awarded him honorary doctorates of literature respectively.In 1954, on his 80th birthday, the Queen of England awarded him the prestigious title of "Knight of the Legion of Honor".On January 25 of the same year, the famous British Garrick Literature Club (Garrick Club) specially hosted a banquet to celebrate his 80th birthday; in the history of English literature, only Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollo received this kind of courtesy. General three writers.In 1961, his alma mater, Heidelberg University in Germany, awarded him the honorary title of trustee.

Maugham died on the French Riviera on December 15, 1965, at the age of ninety-one.His ashes were buried at the Royal College of Canterbury.After his death, the famous Yale University in the United States established an archives to commemorate him. The masterpiece is Maugham's representative work, with obvious autobiographical color.Most of the protagonist Philip Carey's bitter experiences in childhood and youth are based on the writer's early life experience; the writer poured his own thoughts, feelings and personal feelings into this character.However, "it is not an autobiography, but an autobiographical novel in which fact and fiction are inseparably intertwined; "the writer relies on the revelation of facts," using the novelist's authority, concocted several stories to write about my Created characters." In other words, in this novel, Maugham broke the constraints of facts, fabricated some major plots, and created the image of Philip Carey.By describing the tortuous experiences of the protagonist, it exposes the torture and enslavement of people by society from spiritual to material.Although in Philip Carey, we can see some shadows of Maugham in his early years, but he is more like David Copperfield described by Dickens, and more like Enes described by Samuel Butler. Michael Finn by Ter Pontifax and Compton MacKenzie.Therefore, after Cy Butler's "The Way of All Beings", it became another realistic work based on the author's personal experience and exposed the British capitalist society in the late Victorian era, thus truly establishing Maugham's status in the British literary world today.

Philip Carey is a thoughtful, individual young man, suffering from congenital disabilities (lame), withdrawn, sensitive and stubborn.His parents died when he was young, and he spent his childhood in a cold and strange environment; after he entered a boarding school, he was devastated by the unreasonable education system;On his bumpy road of life, there are thorns and thorns. Every step he takes, he has to endure some painful torture and leave wounds that cannot be healed physically and mentally. The novel focuses on describing how he breaks away from the two chains that imprison the human spirit, namely, religion and petty bourgeois customs, and tries to find the true meaning of life in the chaotic and turbulent whirlpool of life.

Philip was brought up by his uncle William, who was the parish priest, and later studied in the Royal Public School attached to the church, so he grew up in an environment full of religious atmosphere.However, he learned firsthand the hypocrisy of religion early on.When he was twelve there was a wave of religious devotion in the school, and Philip seemed very devout.He first saw it in the "Gospel", and then heard the Christian creed about "faith can move mountains" when the priest preached in the cathedral; when he returned home at Christmas, and after his uncle's explanation, he had a return to God. There is no doubt about the divine power of heaven.He fervently and devoutly prays to Almighty God to heal him of his disability before the new school year begins.As the appointed date approached, he became more sincere.On the night before the start of school, he braved the severe cold, naked, and knelt on the bare floor to pray to God, but his lameness remained the same.He insinuated and asked his uncle: "If you prayed to God to do something, and your heart is sincere enough, but it doesn't happen, what does that mean?" The pastor replied, "It can only mean that your heart is not sincere enough." Philip thought of the nanny The story I told him about catching birds: If you can put a pinch of salt on the pony's tail, you can catch the bird easily.It's a pity that no one can get close to the bird.Presumably the same is true of "faith": no one can be sincere enough to get close to God.So he came to a conclusion: his uncle has been playing tricks on him.If Philip was only vaguely aware of the vanity of religious belief at this time, then when he was a little older and had the ability to choose and judge, he consciously shouted "Why do people have to believe in God?" broke.Later, when he lived in Paris and studied painting, he further abandoned the moral and ethical views based on Christianity.All of these vividly reveal the hypocrisy and deceitfulness of religion, and the author's resentment towards religion is full of words.Maugham also used his scalpel-like pen to outline the hypocritical faces and dirty souls of the pastors who are "pillars of society". They are ruthless to believers, colleagues, wives, relatives and friends. "Doctrine" is always just a deceitful nonsense.In the depths of their souls, they actually "believe that God does not exist, and there is nothing after this life".His attack on religion, the main spiritual pillar of society, was so fiercely worded, which was rare in the literary world at that time.This is one of those realist achievements that cannot be ignored.

Philip loves life, is full of longing for the future, and does not want to waste his precious life in order to "serve God".He resolutely left the lifeless Royal College without waiting for graduation.He moved between Europe and England, studying and painting, seeking a place to settle down; while experiencing the world, he also devoted himself to studying ancient and modern philosophical works to explore the mysteries of life.But his efforts are fruitless. He can only find spiritual sustenance from the cynical and strange theories of the down-and-out poet Cronshaw, and outline a set of so-called "do whatever you want, just pay attention to the policeman on the corner" life. "Guidelines".In fact, this set of "guidelines" simply "doesn't work" in real life.He went to St. Luke's Medical College in London to study medicine, fell in love with Mildred, the waitress at Eppy's pastry shop, and abandoned his studies for her. He spent a lot of money on the small inheritance left by his father, plus business. The stocks lost money, and there was no livelihood for a while. Fortunately, a friend introduced me to work as a customer receptionist in a clothing store, which saved me from living on the streets.He has experienced all the hardships in the world and the harshness of the world, and finally came to the conclusion that life is like a Persian carpet, colorful and dazzling, but essentially meaningless.Although in the writer's writing, the protagonist is considered to have got rid of the entanglement of lust and the burden of life responsibilities, and seems to have entered the state of "enlightenment and great thoroughness" with a clear mind and a pure mind, and finally even had an ending of "no extreme peace", but we In this character, we can clearly see the sad fate of young people's ideals being shattered in capitalist society. Philip's personal misfortune undoubtedly has its rich social content.His tragic fate should be said to be determined by the times he lived in.From the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, it was such a historical period that capitalist Britain was rapidly transitioning to the stage of monopoly capital.Capital was quickly concentrated in the hands of the financial and industrial monopoly bourgeoisie, and the middle and lower classes were sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of poverty.The British Empire crazily competed for markets abroad, and desperately plundered the resources of the colonies.In 1899, the British colonialists brazenly launched a two-year-long war of aggression against the Boers in South Africa; the "giants did their best" to win the dishonorable "victory".Then, another world war was brewing among the imperialists to redefine their spheres of influence.Capitalist society is experiencing severe and acute economic and political crises.With the gradual disintegration of inherent religion, morality, culture, and philosophy, a profound spiritual crisis has inevitably emerged in people's minds.Gone is the false optimism of the Victorian era.Western civilization has led human beings into a spiritual impasse.What the novel shows is just such a gloomy picture of "the real world full of horrors". All kinds of characters on the picture are driven by the "God of Destiny", drifting in the "boundless and endless dark abyss". I don’t know where it will be thrown.” The novel revolves around the ups and downs of the protagonist Philip, calmly and objectively revealing the tragic fate of a series of gray characters.Among them is the poor and sick "Geneva citizen" Dicroux who survived by teaching poor students. He fought bloody battles for "freedom" when he was young, but in his later years he did not place any hope on the entire human race and waited for death to be obtained. Liberation; there is Fanny Price, a poor student who is determined to devote herself to art but has no talent for painting. Suicide by hanging; there is Cronshaw, a down-and-out literati who lamented his untimely birth and claimed to see through the world. He made a living by translating vulgar novels and concocting boring poems and essays. His life of poverty and poverty; there is Mildred, a money-loving, vain, and mediocre waitress. "Submerged in the vast sea of ​​people in London." In addition, there are even those poor Londoners who were taken away by the writer. Many of them could not bear the suffering of poverty and were forced to a dead end.From here, we can easily see that Philip's misfortune is just a small episode in the great tragedy of the whole society. It can be seen that Maugham bluntly described the social life, religious beliefs, customs and habits of the past era in his novels, and at the same time vividly and truly shaped all kinds of characters.These characters are people of the age, class, and society; their personal destiny is always connected with the era in which they live.This is how Maugham looks at the world with cold eyes and reflects life as it is, and this is how he constantly digs the scars of British capitalist society.This undoubtedly shows that Maugham, as a writer, has the valuable quality of the mouthpiece of the times. As a keen observer of society, Maugham will not fail to see that the society he lives in has become ill and blind, and all kinds of suffering in the world are caused by this riddled society.However, as a bourgeois writer divorced from the people, he certainly would not see that the root of Western social tragedies lies in the capitalist system itself, let alone admit that only by changing the social system can such social tragedies be fundamentally eliminated.The "true meaning" of life that Philip finally realizes in the novel is actually the writer's conclusion after examining life and society: life is meaningless, and it is impossible to change it into another.Only by abandoning the fantasy of life and breaking free from spiritual shackles can one become a free man who has nothing to pursue and no obsession.Obviously, the reason why Maugham chose "The Shackles of Life" as the title of the novel is his intention.The novel was originally titled "Beauty from Ashes" (Beauty from Ashes) said by the great Hebrew prophet Isaiah (Isaiah, a character in the Christian Bible). "I saw the saying "the shackles of life" in "The Shackles of Life", and gladly changed it.Spinoza believes that: people succumb to emotions, as if they are in chains; only by using reason can people be free.He advocated that people should use imagination and reason, and turn experience into foresight, so that they can grasp the "future" and not become slaves of the "past".Of course, when Maugham borrowed this statement, the rational content disappeared, and it was replaced by a set of nihilistic life philosophies similar to the oriental Buddhist sayings of "pure mind and few desires" and "all four things are empty".This is where the dross of this great book lies.In fact, this set of "philosophies" expounded by the writer in the novel is, to put it bluntly, nothing more than a self-deceiving preaching, a mental anesthetic that paralyzes people's ambitions, and it can neither relieve the pain of those struggling under the shackles of capitalism. , and it will not help to change the social reality that causes all kinds of misfortunes in the world.This is a question that we must think and analyze after reading the novel. The novel was published in 1915.In fact, Maugham started writing the autobiographical novel "The Artistic Temperament of Stephen Carey" immediately after finishing his first novel "Lisa of Lambeth" in 1897.The book was never published, and the author himself never had the courage to read it and let it go. "However, I can't forget those characters in the book, as well as those events and feelings... A certain haunting memory of the past has become an unbearable torture, making me unwilling to eat, sleepless, and finally, I Decided to take a hiatus from theater writing to detach myself from memories. I wrote the book (i.e., it took me two years... I had the desired effect, because after I read the proofs, I found that those All the lingering ghosts have rested in peace: no matter the characters or events, they have never appeared in my mind again... Now it is difficult for me to tell clearly which contents are my fictions and which are living facts-- What actually happened and what did I wish would happen." It can be seen that when Maugham wrote this work, he changed his drafts successively. It was brewed and conceived for more than ten years. It is a masterpiece carefully conceived and created.As he said to a friend: "Educated people often ask me, why don't you write a novel like this again? I answer them because I only have one life. It took me thirty years to collect to the materials needed to write that novel." After the novel came out, it was well received by many famous writers and critics at the time, thinking that it was a moving novel that "integrated the author's sincere feelings and reflected the author's true thoughts. It "excellently expresses a deep and even tragic emotion in a simple and unpretentious style" and "leaves a frank and sincere impression on people".The famous American critical realist writer Theodore Dreiser, in an article titled "The Shackles of Life in the Eyes of a Realist", called this novel "a work of genius" and Maugham "artist".Since its publication, this novel has never been out of print, and it is still widely read by readers all over the world.In 1966, the famous British critic Syar Connolly listed this book as one of the "100 Great Works of the Modern Literary Movement", which shows that it has a position that cannot be ignored in the history of British literature. The division of labor of the translators of this book: Chapter 1 to Chapter 63, translated by Zhang Zengjian and Ni Jun; Chapter 64 to Chapter 122, translated by Zhang Boran. Zhang Zengjian Zhang Boran