The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
"It is hard that a man's exterior should tally so little sometimes with his soul. Dirk Stroeve had the passion of Romeo in the body of Sir Toby Belch. He had a sweet and generous nature, and yet was always blundering; a real feeling for what was beautiful and the capacity to create only what was commonplace; a peculiar delicacy of sentiment and gross manners. He could exercise tact when dealing with the affairs of others, but none when dealing with his own. 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."
I don’t know a dime about Modern Art history or French Post-impressionist painting, but on a random occasion, I’ve ran into Paul Gauguin’s biography, and his disturbingly direct quote remained fresh in my mind. “Civilization is what makes me sick”, he announced, and huddled off to Tahiti to escape Europe and “all that is artificial and conventional”, abandoned his wife and children to fend for themselves, never to make contact with them again. This struck me as the ultimate expression of individuality, a resounding slap to the judgmental face of conservative society, an escapist act of repugnant selfishness that could only be justified by immeasurable artistic talent, genius, some may call it. When I discovered that there is a book by W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, written based on Gauguin, my joy knows no bounds.
The Moon and Sixpence is a book about the life of an unassuming British stockbroker, with a secret unquenchable thirst for art that he is willing to abandon the trivial pleasures of bourgeois life for the penury and hard life of an aspiring painter without considering himself ridiculous or vain. He is cold, selfish and uncompromising in this quest for beauty. The protagonist, Charles Strickland, at first appears to be commonplace. You wouldn’t have in a million years, detect anything special in him. Strickland’s wife loves arts and letters, but Strickland 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. Again, this “good old husband” is awfully quiet and extraordinarily normal that you would have not expect what happened next.
Strickland left his wife and children, cut all ties with them, and started travelling to the end of the world. From London, first to Paris, Marseilles, and then to remote Tahiti. In all those years, people think he sucked at painting and couldn’t see any value in his work. He only had few pence in his pocket, he was always starved, living off a loaf of bread and a jar of milk per week.. Yet, he can hardly attract sympathy as he is an asshole, an awful person, and extremely misogynistic. Maugham paints him as a rogue loner, an unfathomable apparition, compelled to inhuman acts by the divine tyranny of art.
"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."
It's been a while since I've read such an odious character in literature, I believe Maugham purposely crafted Strickland in a way for readers to despise him, meanwhile reminding readers that none of us have the right to tell a person how to feel or behave. In this vast universe, everyone has one share of life, and manmade morality and conventionality shall not be the excuse for us to steal other’s life. Perhaps, when people claims moral high ground to alter other’s opinion is more about ensuring their power of influence on others, rather than giving a damn about the subject matter itself.
“It was impossible to make him understand that one might be outraged by his callous selfishness. I longed to pierce his armour of complete indifference. I knew also that in the end there was truth in what he said. Unconsciously, perhaps, we treasure the power we have over people by their regard for our opinion of them, and we hate those upon whom we have no such influence."
Many readers adore this book for prevailing theme of dreams and passion, while I appreciate the themes of primitivism, antisocial, loneliness, criticism on conventionality, and the bash of moral indignation. People view Strickland as cruel for abandoning her wife and children, yet Strickland believe his wife could fend for herself and his children already had 17 years of good life. In accordance with the perspective of Sartre responsibility concept, in the face of absurdity, everyone has a responsibility to make choices and take action to make their own freedom. In this context, Strickland has done no wrong. Suppose there is even right or wrong.
Strickland is bad at words. He expresses himself with difficulty, as though words were not the medium with which his mind worked; and people had to guess the intentions of his soul by hackneyed phrases, slang, and vague, unfinished gestures. This is also what makes art absolutely critical for him. Art is an emotional outlet for this quiet man, art is powerful when words are powerless to utter. This also lead to a main theme of this book—loneliness and expression.
“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. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.”
Gauguin also comes up a lot in discussions on primitivism and orientalism, and reading Strickland’s time in Tahiti moved me. The discussion on place and how we might be searching for a place where we are free to be really spoke to me.
“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history.”
By the end of the book, Strickland found home. In order not to spoil everything, I’ll just leave it like this. For the unpretentious, sympathetic and humane portrayal of all the flawed characters, ironic humor, and beautiful prose, The Moon and Sixpence shall remain one of my favorite books.
