The Moon and Sixpence – The World and Ideals

I finished this book on the train. I like calling it “The Moon and Sixpence.” As I mentioned in the previous article, I was traveling back alone. On Douban, I Doumail’d my friend Yiyi—they were in car 8, I was in car 6. I said if I got bored I’d come find them, but by the time the train reached Chengdu, I still hadn’t gone over. With just a few minutes left before arriving at the North Railway Station, I was busy finishing the last few paragraphs of “The Moon and Sixpence.” I was sitting in a very comfortable window seat, facing the direction the train was heading. Before night fell, I could watch the scenery rushing backward outside the window. When tired, I could rest my head on the train’s window frame. I was well aware of the strange looks from the several grade ‘09 classmates around me who’d been playing Dou Dizhu and poker all night, arguing over a few cents. When the three of them first got on the train, they wanted me to switch seats with them—I don’t like watching scenery going backward, so I didn’t switch. They then switched with the person next to me. Later events proved my choice was right. At Xichang Station, several Yi ethnic compatriots heading to Chengdu for work got on and directly crowded into that spot without leaving. One guy had to give up his seat to these Yi people and stood in the aisle all night. So I hid in a small corner and finished reading this book. Reading this type of novel on a train might not be appropriate—something like “Zhiyin” or “Story Club” would be more mainstream.

The first one hundred and forty-some pages I read in the dorm. Strickland was a stockbroker in London. Even now, being a stockbroker is still a decent profession—the stock investors’ money all goes to the securities companies. Obviously Strickland’s living conditions at the time could be called excellent. But one day, after returning to London from the countryside alone, he suddenly ran away, abandoning his wife and children. He went to Paris alone to start painting. He had no foundation whatsoever. The novel’s first-person narrator “I” went to Paris on behalf of his wife to beg him to return, but this heartless, ungrateful guy Strickland remained unmoved. He believed he was now pursuing his ideal, and women were nothing more than stumbling blocks in his pursuit of that ideal, so he had to leave them. Strickland drifted around Paris for a while. There he broke up a family that had been helping him. Stroeve helped the sick Strickland, but later Stroeve’s wife Blanche fell in love with Strickland and decided to follow him. Unfortunately, Strickland was a cruel guy. After satisfying himself, he made Blanche leave him. Blanche then drank oxalic acid and committed suicide. He later went to Marseille, then soon to an island in the South Pacific, where he devoted himself to painting and married a local woman. He later died of leprosy. During his lifetime, Strickland was unappreciated. After his death, his paintings gained recognition before World War I and became expensive, like Van Gogh.

Strickland was a cold-blooded animal from beginning to end. He didn’t develop feelings for anyone. He thought women only talked about love all day, and love wasn’t a person’s entire life—people also needed to eat, live, and realize their value. Women were obstacles to him achieving his ideal, so he abandoned his wife. Later, when Blanche followed him, he only treated her as his model and a tool to occasionally relieve his desires. When he felt his tool had reached the expected value, to prevent Blanche from controlling him, he made her leave. Blanche felt her goal of firmly controlling Strickland had failed and chose suicide. Maugham has a passage in the book describing his view of women: “Because women can do nothing but talk about love, they attach great importance to love, to the point of absurdity. They also try to convince us that a man’s entire life is love, when in fact love is only an insignificant part of life. I only understand lust, which is normal and healthy. Love is a disease. Women are tools for my pleasure. I find their demands that I treat them as career assistants or life companions extremely annoying.” There’s also a description in the book about Blanche’s suicide. It should be the first-person narrator “I” comforting the anxious Stroeve, saying that when a woman fails to achieve her goal and has no other choice, she’ll threaten with suicide, but the method she prepares won’t actually kill her—it only needs to make the man change his mind. But in the end, Stroeve’s wife Blanche still died.

There’s another tragic character in the novel—Stroeve. He’s a chubby person whose words and actions always make people laugh, even when he’s telling others about his misfortunes. When we share happiness with others, even though they don’t receive any benefit from you, they’ll think you’re a good person and respect you. But if someone frequently shares their troubles with others, the first one or two times listeners might shed a few sympathetic tears. After too many times, what you get is often not sympathy but ridicule—people might even curse you as an idiot to your face or behind your back. Stroeve was exactly this kind of person. He loved life and loved helping others, but he often told people about every trouble he encountered. Combined with his inherently comical appearance, everyone looked down on him. He helped Strickland, but Strickland disliked him intensely and even refused his help. Later, when Blanche left him, he cried and knelt begging Blanche for mercy, and waited for her on her route every day, only to be slapped by Blanche—a typical bitter drama role. “This person has no brain and has lost his dignity as a husband.” I believe begging a woman who doesn’t love you is useless. If a woman decides from the beginning that she no longer loves you, she’ll never love you again. “A woman can be more cruel to a man who still loves her but whom she no longer loves than to anyone else.” After Blanche died, Stroeve returned to his hometown in Holland. I also believe that when someone fails in their ventures outside and has nowhere to go, their hometown is always their best refuge, forever welcoming the return of its wanderers.

This is my first time reading Maugham’s work. Of course, I rarely read more than two works by the same writer. As far as this book goes, I feel Maugham likes to explore the depths of characters’ hearts. Human values are divided into several levels. The lowest level is satisfying one’s survival, the highest is realizing one’s value. Strickland is an anomaly—he skipped several important intermediate steps of gaining others’ recognition and respect, going straight to just feeding himself (even then he couldn’t eat his fill), disregarding everyone’s opinions, pursuing his highest ideal. When a person no longer cares about their own body, would they still consider the world’s opinion of them? I can’t say whether I agree or disagree with Strickland. After all, he gained the world’s recognition after death. But for ordinary people, if everyone acted like him, I think this world would be finished. If there were someone like Strickland around me—someone who disregards others’ opinions, stands out uniquely, and purely pursues realizing themselves or changing all of humanity—I’d think he was crazy. The funny thing is, such a person would completely ignore my opinion too—after all, he’s also a Strickland. My opinion doesn’t count for anything. I also ask myself: what is my ideal? I can’t answer. Probably I only have dreams, no ideals. Or as a friend said, my ideal is to realize my dreams—but does that count as an ideal?

Appendix:

A few brilliant passages casually excerpted:

“Love requires a person to expend enormous energy. It requires a person to leave their own life and specifically become a lover.”

“A woman can forgive a man for hurting her,” he said, “but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes for her.”

“Some say that disaster and misfortune can ennoble human nature—this statement is not correct. What sometimes inspires noble actions is actually happiness and success. In most cases, disaster and misfortune only make people narrow-minded and more vengeful.”

“The difference between men and women when it comes to falling in love is: women can talk about love day and night, while men can only do this kind of thing occasionally.”

“I very much doubt whether Abraham really wasted himself. Doing what one most wants to do, living in an environment one loves, being indifferent and tranquil, detached from worldly strife—is this really wasting oneself? On the contrary, becoming a famous surgeon with an annual salary of ten thousand pounds and marrying a beautiful wife—is that success? I think it all depends on how a person views the meaning of life, what obligations they believe they owe to society, and what demands they make of themselves.”