暖冬cool夏
这里一年四季温暖如春，没有酷暑没有严寒......
七月中旬，读完简爱之后，对英国文学产生了兴趣，遂拿起抽屉里Jane Austin的小说Emma，读了几章，不觉得吸引人， 又拿起她的另一本《傲慢与偏见》读了几章，却始终无法进入。不知道是自己的心境不对，还是她的文字太拗口，所以呢，就想起以文字简单明了著称的美国作家海明威的《老人与海》，花了一个周末(7/24)，读了读。读完海明威的作品，又觉得不过瘾，就像吃了一道清淡的沙拉后，又渴望来红烧肉一样，开始在脑子里搜索英国作家的作品，不知为何就想到毛姆的《月亮与六便士》，从网上找来下载到Kindle上，花了不到一个星期读完，算是结束了七月的阅读。
言归正传
英国作家毛姆以法国名画家高更为原型，于1919创作了他知名的小说《月亮和六便士》。小说向读者描述了19世纪英国(法国)画家Charles Strickland的传奇一生。我想有太多的人读过这本小说和相关的书评，而我只想从他一生中有过的三个女人的这个侧面，来叙述主人公的经历，人性和从中得到的一些感想。
主人公Strickland四十岁之前一直生活在英国，有着一份稳定的工作(股票经纪人)、舒适的生活和美满的家庭。太太漂亮，贤惠，总是把家里收拾得干干净净，家事安排得井井有条，还时常邀请一些文艺界的作家艺术家来家里聚会, 是一个知性、高雅、有品位的女人。她和Strickland育有一男一女两个孩子。世人眼里的Strickland不善言辞，不合群，几分木讷，但是谁也没有想到他会在四十岁那年离家出走，不辞而别去了巴黎。临走前，他给太太留下了一封十分简短的信。信中说，他心意已决，要离开她，不会回来了，这个决定是不会更改的(irrevocable)。看到信，Strickland太太犹如晴天霹雳，不能理解查理的突然举动，以为他一定是带着某个女人私奔了。 故央求作者"我"去巴黎寻找丈夫的下落。作者在巴黎十分破旧的贫民区找到了画家，此时的画家身上只有100英镑。画家告诉作者，他抛妻弃子并不是为了某一个女人，而只是为了圆他的梦想--画画。作者在劝说无效时，斥责他不该分文不留，抛弃17年的妻子，让她无法生活。 画家回答道，我养了她17年，她现在应该自己想想办法了。 当作者又进一步问他，难道你不为两个孩子着想时，他的回答是，我曾经爱过孩子，已经给他们提供了超出普通孩子的舒适条件，他们现在已经长大了，自己对他们也已经没有什么特别的感情了。换句话说，他前面的几十年为家庭孩子而活，从四十岁开始他要抛开一切，为自己活着。这时的画家已经对妻子不关心，对儿女没有牵挂了，他甚至对作者指责他的冷血、不人道，也嗤之以鼻，没有任何羞愧之心。为了梦想，他可以放弃一切世间的情感，置若罔闻世人对他的谴责; 为了梦想，他像朝圣者那样匍匐前进，忍受孤独，忍受贫穷，忍受饥饿。也就是说，为了天上的月亮，他可以舍弃脚下的六便士，在他眼里，婚姻家庭是实现他摘取天上月亮的拦路虎，是他创作的桎梏。
流落巴黎街头的画家Strickland，十分穷困潦倒，饥不果腹，没有钱买颜料和画布。饥饿过度的他发烧生病，濒临死亡边缘。一位十分好心的画家Stroeve在恳求妻子Blanche的首肯后，接Strickland到自己家中，悉心照顾，把他从死神手里夺了回来。而画家回报这位朋友的却是拐走了他的妻子，占据了他的巢穴(应该说是Stroeve出于对太太的爱自动让给他们的)。这种恩将仇报，农夫与蛇的故事实在让人不齿。更让人掉眼球的是，三个月以后，在画家Strickland完成了为Blanche裸体画之后， 他爱的激情消失殆尽，又准备离开她。为此，女友Blanche喝草酸自杀身亡，而画家对此却无动于衷，没有半点自责。 在作者问及理由时，他的回答是，他不需要爱，爱是一种羁绊，爱是一种疾病，女人把爱看得太重，以为爱是人生的一切，为爱可以做一切，而唯有做不到Leave him alone。因为女人对他而言只是生理上的需求，抑或只是模特。他不需要爱，他要的是摆脱任何欲望，全身心地创作。从这一个层面上讲，就如作者在书中所说的，画家是冷漠，极端自私，无情无义，令人憎恨的一个人， 他的眼中只有画作，他不为名不为利，不顾世人的眼光和鄙视，专注(single-minded single-hearted)创作。 为了他的理想，他可以摒弃世间一切，不惜以牺牲自我或牺牲他人为代价。
47岁那一年，画家离开了巴黎，去了马塞尔，最后又漂洋过海到了当时法殖民地Tahiti。一样穷困潦倒的他，却因为是白人，白肤色沾了优势。在老妇人的撮合下，他与一位年仅17岁的当地姑娘Ata结了婚。这位姑娘有父辈留给她的简易楼房，位于茂密山林中。就这样，在Tahiti碧水蓝天、风光旖旎的世外桃源里，在遮天蔽日的椰子林里，画家与Ata过起了伊甸园的生活。不幸的是，天才画家后来得了麻风病。在病入膏肓，双眼失明之际，还在墙上创作了他生命里的最后一副巨作。让人动容的是，他的妻子在遭受村民的唾弃时，依然选择生死不离，一直守着画家，直至尸体发臭发烂，将他埋入尘土。
与前面两位女子不同的是，这位妻子Ata不仅照顾他的生活起居，给他提供吃住的方便，更重要的是，在他不需要她的时候, leave him alone，让他随心所欲。这种Leave him alone正是画家所要的。当有人问他，你怀念巴黎街头的灯火吗？你怀念那里的剧院报纸吗？你怀念车轮滚滚碾压过石子路的声音吗？他的回答是，我会在Tahiti终其一生。因为只有在这样远离尘嚣，无拘无束的环境中，天才画家的创造激情得到了迸发， 创作热情如日中天，一幅幅旷世之作最终成就了他破落却又辉煌的一生，奠定了他死后在欧洲艺术绘画史上的地位。
或许我们可以说，这样特立独行的画家是特殊的群体。众所周知，历史上有不少名画家都是穷困潦倒一生的，有些最后还疯疯癫癫的。但是，他们追求灵魂深处的释放，听从自己内心，不为世俗所羁绊捆绑，超凡脱俗地生活着，这一点又是值得我们深思的。如果这个世界没有道德法律的约束，人们会不会都像画家一样选择自由，这种灵魂身躯最大程度的自由，不为情所困，不为利所动，真正做到，生命诚可贵，爱情价更高，若为自由故，二者皆可抛呢?
The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of his thought; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.
They remember that they too trod down a sated generation, with just such clamor and with just such scorn, and they foresee that these brave torch-bearers will presently yield their place also. There is no last word. The new evangel was old when Nineveh reared her greatness to the sky. These gallant words which seem so novel to those that speak them were said in accents scarcely changed a hundred times before. The pendulum swings backwards and forwards. The circle is ever travelled anew.
When she came to know writers it was like adventuring upon a stage which till then she had known only from the other side of the footlights.
"Why do nice women marry dull men?"
"Because intelligent men won't marry nice women."
The subject was exhausted.
It gushes forth like an oil-well, and the sympathetic pour out their sympathy with an abandon that is sometimes embarrassing to their victims.
"They're both of them the image of you,"
I think he'd bore you to death
you will be bored to extinction.
The dining-room was inconveniently crowded.
But there was no general conversation. Each one talked to his neighbour; to his neighbour on the right during the soup, fish, and entree; to his neighbour on the left during the roast, sweet, and savoury. They talked of the political situation and of golf, of their children and the latest play, of the pictures at the Royal Academy, of the weather and their plans for the holidays. There was never a pause, and the noise grew louder. Mrs. Strickland might congratulate herself that her party was a success. Her husband played his part with decorum. Perhaps he did not talk very much, and I fancied there was towards the end a look of fatigue in the faces of the women on either side of him. They were finding him heavy. Once or twice Mrs. Strickland's eyes rested on him somewhat anxiously.
he was scarcely a credit to a woman who wanted to make herself a position in the world of art and letters. It was obvious that he had no social gifts, but these a man can do without; he had no eccentricity even, to take him out of the common run; he was just a good, dull, honest, plain man. One would admire his excellent qualities, but avoid his company. He was null. He was probably a worthy member of society, a good husband and father, an honest broker; but there was no reason to waste one's time over him.
she accepted my invitation with alacrity
Mrs. Strickland was a charming woman, and she loved him. I pictured their lives, troubled by no untoward adventure, honest, decent, and, by reason of those two upstanding, pleasant children, so obviously destined to carry on the normal traditions of their race and station, not without significance. They would grow old insensibly; they would see their son and daughter come to years of reason, marry in due course—the one a pretty girl, future mother of healthy children; the other a handsome, manly fellow, obviously a soldier; and at last, prosperous in their dignified retirement, beloved by their descendants, after a happy, not unuseful life, in the fullness of their age they would sink into the grave.
That must be the story of innumerable couples, and the pattern of life it offers has a homely grace. It reminds you of a placid rivulet, meandering smoothly through green pastures and shaded by pleasant trees, till at last it falls into the vasty sea; but the sea is so calm, so silent, so indifferent, that you are troubled suddenly by a vague uneasiness. Perhaps it is only by a kink in my nature, strong in me even in those days, that I felt in such an existence, the share of the great majority, something amiss. I recognised its social values, I saw its ordered happiness, but a fever in my blood asked for a wilder course. There seemed to me something alarming in such easy delights. In my heart was a desire to live more dangerously. I was not unprepared for jagged rocks and treacherous shoals if I could only have change—change and the excitement of the unforeseen.
"I don't know. I want him to come back. If he'll do that we'll let bygones be bygones. After all, we've been married for seventeen years. I'm a broadminded woman. I wouldn't have minded what he did as long as I knew nothing about it. He must know that his infatuation won't last. If he'll come back now everything can be smoothed over, and no one will know anything about it."
It chilled me a little that Mrs. Strickland should be concerned with gossip, for I did not know then how great a part is played in women's life by the opinion of others. It throws a shadow of insincerity over their most deeply felt emotions.
"It can't go on at his age," she said. "After all, he's forty. I could understand it in a young man, but I think it's horrible in a man of his years, with children who are nearly grown up. His health will never stand it."
"Tell him that our home cries out for him. Everything is just the same, and yet everything is different. I can't live without him. I'd sooner kill myself. Talk to him about the past, and all we've gone through together. What am I to say to the children when they ask for him? His room is exactly as it was when he left it. It's waiting for him. We're all waiting for him."
I admired her forethought, but in retrospect it made her tears perhaps less moving. I could not decide whether she desired the return of her husband because she loved him, or because she dreaded the tongue of scandal; and I was perturbed by the suspicion that the anguish of love contemned was alloyed in her broken heart with the pangs, sordid to my young mind, of wounded vanity. I had not yet learnt how contradictory is human nature; I did not know how much pose there is in the sincere, how much baseness in the noble, nor how much goodness in the reprobate.
I was pleased with my role of the trusted friend bringing back the errant husband to his forgiving wife.
There was a large wooden bedstead on which was a billowing red eiderdown.
I might have spoken of the economic position of woman, of the contract, tacit and overt, which a man accepts by his marriage, and of much else; but I felt that there was only one point which really signified.
"Damn it all, there are your children to think of. They've never done you any harm. They didn't ask to be brought into the world. If you chuck everything like this, they'll be thrown on the streets.
"Can the law get blood out of a stone?
"I tell you I've got to paint. I can't help myself. When a man falls into the water it doesn't matter how he swims, well or badly: he's got to get out or else he'll drown."
Blackguard
Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labour.
Looking back, I think now that he was blind to everything but to some disturbing vision in his soul.
I asked myself whether there was not in his soul some deep-rooted instinct of creation, which the circumstances of his life had obscured, but which grew relentlessly, as a cancer may grow in the living tissues, till at last it took possession of his whole being and forced him irresistibly to action. The cuckoo lays its egg in the strange bird's nest, and when the young one is hatched it shoulders its foster-brothers out and breaks at last the nest that has sheltered it.
they have abandoned the joy of the world and the love of women for the painful austerities of the cloister. Conversion may come under many shapes, and it may be brought about in many ways. With some men it needs a cataclysm, as a stone may be broken to fragments by the fury of a torrent; but with some it comes gradually, as a stone may be worn away by the ceaseless fall of a drop of water. Strickland had the directness of the fanatic and the ferocity of the apostle.
But here was a man who sincerely did not mind what people thought of him, and so convention had no hold on him; he was like a wrestler whose body is oiled; you could not get a grip on him;
Nor with such a man could you expect the appeal to conscience to be effective.
"A man doesn't throw up his business and leave his wife and children at the age of forty to become a painter unless there's a woman in it.
Mrs. Strickland sprang to her feet.
He'll come back with his tail between his legs and settle down again quite comfortably.
Now I am well aware that pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love, can find place side by side in the same human heart.
and in whose hold he is as helpless as a fly in a spider's web. It's as though someone had cast a spell over him. I'm reminded of those strange stories one sometimes hears of another personality entering into a man and driving out the old one. The soul lives unstably in the body, and is capable of mysterious transformations. In the old days they would say Charles Strickland had a devil."
and beamed and laughed, and in the exuberance of his delight sweated at every pore.
His apologetic laugh did not disguise the pleasure that he felt. His eyes lingered on his picture. It was strange that his critical sense, so accurate and unconventional when he dealt with the work of others, should be satisfied in himself with what was hackneyed and vulgar beyond belief.
"Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination."
We threaded our way among the tables till we came to him.
He ate with appetite, but was indifferent to what he ate; to him it was only food that he devoured to still the pangs of hunger; and when no food was to be had he seemed capable of doing without. I learned that for six months he had lived on a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk a day. He was a sensual man, and yet was indifferent to sensual things. He looked upon privation as no hardship. There was something impressive in the manner in which he lived a life wholly of the spirit.
and you feel an intimate communion with the breeze, and with the trees breaking into leaf, and with the iridescence of the river. You feel like God. Can you explain that to me?"
his brow puckered in dismay
He bore himself most unbecomingly.
He had omitted nothing that could make his wife despise him. There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.
in his eyes was a pain that was heartrending and an amazement that was ludicrous
What a cruel practical joke old Nature played when she flung so many contradictory elements together, and left the man face to face with the perplexing callousness of the universe.
to trifle away an idle hour
The summer came, breathless and sultry, and even at night there was no coolness to rest one's jaded nerves. The sun-baked streets seemed to give back the heat that had beat down on them during the day, and the passers-by dragged their feet along them wearily.
It gave me a sudden wrench of the heart-strings.
He was sore and bruised, and his thoughts went back to the tenderness of his mother's love. The ridicule he had endured for years seemed now to weigh him down, and the final blow of Blanche's treachery had robbed him of the resiliency which had made him take it so gaily. He could no longer laugh with those who laughed at him. He was an outcast. He told me of his childhood in the tidy brick house, and of his mother's passionate orderliness. Her kitchen was a miracle of clean brightness. Everything was always in its place, and no where could you see a speck of dust. Cleanliness, indeed, was a mania with her. I saw a neat little old woman, with cheeks like apples, toiling away from morning to night, through the long years, to keep her house trim and spruce. His father was a spare old man, his hands gnarled after the work of a lifetime, silent and upright; in the evening he read the paper aloud, while his wife and daughter (now married to the captain of a fishing smack), unwilling to lose a moment, bent over their sewing. Nothing ever happened in that little town, left behind by the advance of civilisation, and one year followed the next till death came, like a friend, to give rest to those who had laboured so diligently.
"My father wished me to become a carpenter like himself. For five generations we've carried on the same trade, from father to son. Perhaps that is the wisdom of life, to tread in your father's steps, and look neither to the right nor to the left. When I was a little boy I said I would marry the daughter of the harness-maker who lived next door. She was a little girl with blue eyes and a flaxen pigtail. She would have kept my house like a new pin, and I should have had a son to carry on the business after me."
Stroeve sighed a little and was silent. His thoughts dwelt among pictures of what might have been, and the safety of the life he had refused filled him with longing.
"The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of life."
They pinched and saved so that I should have enough to live on,
though now the sight of it was like a stab in his heart
but then curiosity got the better of him
Tahiti is a lofty green island, with deep folds of a darker green, in which you divine silent valleys; there is mystery in their sombre depths, down which murmur and plash cool streams, and you feel that in those umbrageous places life from immemorial times has been led according to immemorial ways. Even here is something sad and terrible. But the impression is fleeting, and serves only to give a greater acuteness to the enjoyment of the moment. It is like the sadness which you may see in the jester's eyes when a merry company is laughing at his sallies; his lips smile and his jokes are gayer because in the communion of laughter he finds himself more intolerably alone.
Tiare smiled indulgently as she remembered the gaiety of a time long passed.
Ata's property was right away in a fold of the mountain.
Ata's father had planted crotons round his property, and they grew in coloured profusion, gay and brilliant; they fenced the land with flame. A mango grew in front of the house, and at the edge of the clearing were two flamboyants, twin trees, that challenged the gold of the cocoa-nuts with their scarlet flowers.
saw a middle-aged Frenchman with a big black beard, streaked with gray, a sunburned face, and large, shining eyes.
I live on an atoll, a low island, it is a strip of land surrounding a lagoon, and its beauty is the beauty of the sea and sky and the varied colour of the lagoon and the grace of the cocoa-nut trees; but the place where Strickland lived had the beauty of the Garden of Eden. Ah, I wish I could make you see the enchantment of that spot, a corner hidden away from all the world, with the blue sky overhead and the rich, luxuriant trees. It was a feast of colour. And it was fragrant and cool. Words cannot describe that paradise. And here he lived, unmindful of the world and by the world forgotten. I suppose to European eyes it would have seemed astonishingly sordid. The house was dilapidated and none too clean.
the intense silence of the night
There is the rustle of the myriad animals on the beach, all the little shelled things that crawl about ceaselessly, and there is the noisy scurrying of the land-crabs. Now and then in the lagoon you hear the leaping of a fish, and sometimes a hurried noisy splashing as a brown shark sends all the other fish scampering for their lives. And above all, ceaseless like time, is the dull roar of the breakers on the reef. But here there was not a sound, and the air was scented with the white flowers of the night. It was a night so beautiful that your soul seemed hardly able to bear the prison of the body. You felt that it was ready to be wafted away on the immaterial air, and death bore all the aspect of a beloved friend."
"'And do you never regret Europe? Do you not yearn sometimes for the light of the streets in Paris or London, the companionship of your friends, and equals, que sais-je? for theatres and newspapers, and the rumble of omnibuses on the cobbled pavements?'
"Do you know how men can be so obsessed by love that they are deaf and blind to everything else in the world? They are as little their own masters as the slaves chained to the benches of a galley. The passion that held Strickland in bondage was no less tyrannical than love."
"And the passion that held Strickland was a passion to create beauty. It gave him no peace. It urged him hither and thither. He was eternally a pilgrim, haunted by a divine nostalgia, and the demon within him was ruthless. There are men whose desire for truth is so great that to attain it they will shatter the very foundation of their world. Of such was Strickland, only beauty with him took the place of truth. I could only feel for him a profound compassion."
When Dr. Coutras arrived at the plantation he was seized with a feeling of uneasiness. Though he was hot from walking, he shivered. There was something hostile in the air which made him hesitate, and he felt that invisible forces barred his way. Unseen hands seemed to draw him back.
Strickland remained placid. Looking back, I think now that he was blind to everything but to some disturbing vision in his soul.
oblivious of everything in his effort to get what he saw with the mind's eye; and then, having finished, not the picture perhaps, for I had an idea that he seldom brought anything to completion, but the passion that fired him, he lost all care for it. He was never satisfied with what he had done;
"Who makes fame? Critics, writers, stockbrokers, women."
"Wouldn't it give you a rather pleasing sensation to think of people you didn't know and had never seen receiving emotions, subtle and passionate, from the work of your hands? Everyone likes power. I can't imagine a more wonderful exercise of it than to move the souls of men to pity or terror."
"I don't. I only want to paint what I see."
"I wonder if I could write on a desert island, with the certainty that no eyes but mine would ever see what I had written."
Strickland did not speak for a long time, but his eyes shone strangely, as though he saw something that kindled his soul to ecstasy.
"Sometimes I've thought of an island lost in a boundless sea, where I could live in some hidden valley, among strange trees, in silence. There I think I could find what I want."
"I should have thought sometimes you couldn't help thinking of the past. I don't mean the past of seven or eight years ago, but further back still, when you first met your wife, and loved her, and married her. Don't you remember the joy with which you first took her in your arms?"
I do not suppose she had ever really cared for her husband, and what I had taken for love was no more than the feminine response to caresses and comfort which in the minds of most women passes for it. It is a passive feeling capable of being roused for any object, as the vine can grow on any tree; and the wisdom of the world recognises its strength when it urges a girl to marry the man who wants her with the assurance that love will follow. It is an emotion made up of the satisfaction in security, pride of property, the pleasure of being desired, the gratification of a household, and it is only by an amiable vanity that women ascribe to it spiritual value.
But if one could be certain of nothing in dealing with creatures so incalculable as human beings, there were explanations of Blanche Stroeve's behaviour which were at all events plausible. On the other hand, I did not understand Strickland at all. I racked my brain, but could in no way account for an action so contrary to my conception of him. It was not strange that he should so heartlessly have betrayed his friends' confidence, nor that he hesitated not at all to gratify a whim at the cost of another's misery. That was in his character. He was a man without any conception of gratitude. He had no compassion. The emotions common to most of us simply did not exist in him, and it was as absurd to blame him for not feeling them as for blaming the tiger because he is fierce and cruel. But it was the whim I could not understand.
I could not believe that Strickland had fallen in love with Blanche Stroeve. I did not believe him capable of love. That is an emotion in which tenderness is an essential part, but Strickland had no tenderness either for himself or for others; there is in love a sense of weakness, a desire to protect, an eagerness to do good and to give pleasure—if not unselfishness, at all events a selfishness which marvellously conceals itself; it has in it a certain diffidence. These were not traits which I could imagine in Strickland. Love is absorbing; it takes the lover out of himself.
Love is never quite devoid of sentimentality.
But I suppose that everyone's conception of the passion is formed on his own idiosyncrasies, and it is different with every different person. A man like Strickland would love in a manner peculiar to himself. It was vain to seek the analysis of his emotion.
There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.
The summer came, breathless and sultry, and even at night there was no coolness to rest one's jaded nerves. The sun-baked streets seemed to give back the heat that had beat down on them during the day, and the passers-by dragged their feet along them wearily.
I hoped that the grief which now seemed intolerable would be softened by the lapse of time, and a merciful forgetfulness would help him to take up once more the burden of life. He was young still, and in a few years he would look back on all his misery with a sadness in which there would be something not unpleasurable. Sooner or later he would marry some honest soul in Holland, and I felt sure he would be happy
"A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her," he said, "but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account."
The satyr in him suddenly took possession, and he was powerless in the grip of an instinct which had all the strength of the primitive forces of nature. It was an obsession so complete that there was no room in his soul for prudence or gratitude.
"I don't want love. I haven't time for it. It's weakness. I am a man, and sometimes I want a woman. When I've satisfied my passion I'm ready for other things. I can't overcome my desire, but I hate it; it imprisons my spirit; I look forward to the time when I shall be free from all desire and can give myself without hindrance to my work. Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part. I know lust. That's normal and healthy. Love is a disease. Women are the instruments of my pleasure; I have no patience with their claim to be helpmates, partners, companions."
"When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her. She has a small mind, and she resents the abstract which she is unable to grasp. She is occupied with material things, and she is jealous of the ideal. The soul of man wanders through the uttermost regions of the universe, and she seeks to imprison it in the circle of her account-book. Do you remember my wife? I saw Blanche little by little trying all her tricks. With infinite patience she prepared to snare me and bind me. She wanted to bring me down to her level; she cared nothing for me, she only wanted me to be hers. She was willing to do everything in the world for me except the one thing I wanted: to leave me alone."
It's a preposterous attempt to try to live only for yourself and by yourself. Sooner or later you'll be ill and tired and old, and then you'll crawl back into the herd. Won't you be ashamed when you feel in your heart the desire for comfort and sympathy? You're trying an impossible thing. Sooner or later the human being in you will yearn for the common bonds of humanity."
Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual.
I surmise that she realised that to him she was not an individual, but an instrument of pleasure; he was a stranger still, and she tried to bind him to herself with pathetic arts. She strove to ensnare him with comfort and would not see that comfort meant nothing to him. For in men, as a rule, love is but an episode which takes its place among the other affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid on it in novels gives it an importance which is untrue to life. There are few men to whom it is the most important thing in the world, and they are not very interesting ones; even women, with whom the subject is of paramount interest, have a contempt for them. They are flattered and excited by them, but have an uneasy feeling that they are poor creatures. But even during the brief intervals in which they are in love, men do other things which distract their mind; the trades by which they earn their living engage their attention; they are absorbed in sport; they can interest themselves in art. For the most part, they keep their various activities in various compartments, and they can pursue one to the temporary exclusion of the other. They have a faculty of concentration on that which occupies them at the moment, and it irks them if one encroaches on the other. As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.
With Strickland the sexual appetite took a very small place. It was unimportant. It was irksome. His soul aimed elsewhither. He had violent passions, and on occasion desire seized his body so that he was driven to an orgy of lust, but he hated the instincts that robbed him of his self-possession. I think, even, he hated the inevitable partner in his debauchery. When he had regained command over himself, he shuddered at the sight of the woman he had enjoyed. His thoughts floated then serenely in the empyrean, and he felt towards her the horror that perhaps the painted butterfly, hovering about the flowers, feels to the filthy chrysalis from which it has triumphantly emerged. I suppose that art is a manifestation of the sexual instinct. It is the same emotion which is excited in the human heart by the sight of a lovely woman, the Bay of Naples under the yellow moon, and the Entombment of Titian. It is possible that Strickland hated the normal release of sex because it seemed to him brutal by comparison with the satisfaction of artistic creation. It seems strange even to myself, when I have described a man who was cruel, selfish, brutal and sensual, to say that he was a great idealist. The fact remains.
He lived more poorly than an artisan. He worked harder. He cared nothing for those things which with most people make life gracious and beautiful. He was indifferent to money. He cared nothing about fame. You cannot praise him because he resisted the temptation to make any of those compromises with the world which most of us yield to. He had no such temptation. It never entered his head that compromise was possible. He lived in Paris more lonely than an anchorite in the deserts of Thebes. He asked nothing his fellows except that they should leave him alone. He was single-hearted in his aim, and to pursue it he was willing to sacrifice not only himself—many can do that—but others. He had a vision.
Personally, I want to have the cake and eat it, too, or staring at the moon while groping for the sixpence ;-)
周末快乐！
谢谢暖暖分享精彩书评：）
《傲慢与偏见》刚好相反，看到的是人性之美，男女主人公的反省及美德，也正如此，结局也是美的。
婚姻爱情是个永恒的话题，正因为千姿百态，这世界才缤纷多彩。正常稳定的婚姻是给人港湾、温暖的地方，而像画家这样比较特殊的人群，把婚姻爱情当做枷锁的人，一定也存在的。在这些人眼里，婚姻爱情都有保鲜期的，过期了，就该扔了:))尤其是艺术家，需要不断的灵感，刺激，注定他们的生活不会像常人一样。
这篇小说给我的另一个感触就是女人不能把爱情当做人生的全部，要独立，要给人空间。
思韵妹妹周末快乐！
我可能更象迪儿，耐心出了"问题"。:) 我也同意楼下说的，这个画家是被命运选中了，执着得超凡，所以能迸发出留世作品。有些人，更是属于世界，而不是单一女人的。不好去太多地评判人家，生命对谁都是叹息。
画家有点偏执狂，一根筋的人，他不为名不为利，眼里只有画，这种执着成就了他。我对毛姆了解不多，但是我抄了不少他小说中关于爱情的观点，好像是有点像你说的不屑一顾。等有空来搜一搜他，来读读。再次感谢你的补充和信息，祝周末快乐！
以暖冬这样的个性，我想应能成就一个不平凡的人 ：）
不过呢，这是我读完这篇小说的感想。你提到了你弟弟，让我理解了，人在这个社会上其实就是矛盾体。普通人因为普通平凡，没有这么多烦恼，而那些天才型的，有时就会与世格格不入。读小说可以解闷，现在有时觉得日子太平淡无奇了:)迪儿周末好！
其实我现在的文章写得不如以前，一直在想这个问题。照理，文字应该越写越顺的。想起你的处女作小说，也是我最喜欢的那篇。有些作家也是如此，后面的作品技术越来越娴熟，为什么反而不如以前的?
一个作家的一部作品，只要有一两处真正打动人心的，真正的经典哲理句子好像就可以流芳百世:)。毛姆这篇小说里的金句很多，这些只是在公司电脑word上highlight的，Kindle上的还没有倒出来。等下了首页，我再来贴。
谢谢mm,周末快乐！
谢谢你的精彩书评。我水平不够，兴趣不够，耐心也不够，这些名著和我一辈子无缘了。是你的描述，让我知道了这个惊心动魄的故事，更深刻地认识了许多画家的共性。对于他们，很难用对错衡量。
之所以很理解，因为我有一个画家弟弟，我也是渐渐理解了他的独特和挣扎。好在随着年龄增长阅历增加，我弟弟世俗了许多，也快乐了许多。
相对来说，毛姆是较少慈悲心的作家，笔触偏于尖刻不留情面的，所以比较接近真实。不过，嗯，总是有不过的。一言难尽。
谢谢你，带着我们重温经典。
Strickland 在成为艺术的追求者之后，变得忘我，摒弃所有桎梏，只是恣意地任爱流淌。
谢谢暖冬的介绍。
暖冬好文！
画家自己成就了自己，而非他人。若每个人都能这样义无反顾的追求自己的梦想，都会得到相应的帮助。但，人们没有这样的勇气。他的妻儿没有了他的照应，也能找到生存的路。过程中必定比一生受人照顾收获大，虽说是被逼。
他的第三任妻子是真爱啊，爱一个人就是给人自由，让他如他所是的样子。