I am studying Maugham's works these days, Maugham was born in the 1970s and lived until the 1960s, he really is what kind of big world have seen, such as experiencing World War I and World War II, traveled to the East and the West, loved men and women, as a regular and also as a secret agent.
As the best storyteller of all time, it kept writing for 65 years (from the first novel, Lisa of Lambeth, in 1897 to the last, Purely for His Own Pleasure, in 1962), somehow documenting the human psyche and trends in humanities through novels and plays.
I looked at his work near 1929. in 1925 he wrote The Veil, in 1929 he began writing The Seekers of Pleasure, and then the play The Breadwinner, which came out in 1930.
Along with Camus's "The Plague," Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera," and Maugham's "The Veil" are typical of epidemic literature.
Maugham traveled to China in 1920, and wrote a volume of Chinese Insights (also known as On the Chinese Screen). Since then, his writing has been full of oriental meanings, trying to use oriental culture to make a breakthrough to the dilemma of western culture, to explore, although there may not be any clear answer, but at least he is actively trying.
The Veil is set in Hong Kong and a place called "Mae Ta Foo". The heroine, Katie, is beautiful and vain, and she marries Walter, who loves her dearly, but she doesn't love him. Soon after the marriage, she cheats on him. Walter designed Katie and himself *** to go to the infected area, ready to carry out revenge. But in the infected area, where Walter desperately tried to save patients and won the admiration of his wife and the crowd, he was never able to get out of the haze of lost love. In his last moments before dying, he said, "It's the dogs that die."
"In the end, it was the dog that died," a famous allusion from the famous Western poet Goldsmith's Elegy. The idea is that a good man took in a dog, and then the animal and the man turned against each other, and the dog went mad and bit the man. Everyone thinks the bitten good Samaritan will die, but it's the dog that ends up dead.
The whole story of "The Veil" was also inspired by the poem "Purgatory (Pure Land)" from Dante's Divine Comedy, Part II, about a noblewoman who cheats on her husband and ends up imprisoned by him in a poisonous place.
Maugham combined the two stories and added a mysterious oriental, Chinese setting, and came up with "The Veil". Maugham searched the world for material to create, so he could work for over sixty years and his thoughts never ran out. Some years ago, we always talked about crossing boundaries, but in fact, in the world of writers, cross-cultural and cross-story, it is commonly used. In the world of survival and development, there is material for me everywhere for those who are attentive.
In this story, the woman's path of self-growth and redemption is also mentioned, she should not rely on anyone to find her inner sense of belonging, nor does she need external forces as bricks to reinforce the instability of her inner world. ***Too much sadness in love can lead to a victim mindset, forgetting that survival and development requires a strong mindset.
The wounds of the West may also not need the practice of the East to heal, but you have to know, go to take, try, some sense and degree to go to taste and learn from. It's the flow of cultures and ideas that happens most often in the world back then.
Our past two decades have been characterized by the flow of ideas, concepts and markets from the East and the West, and the emergence of so many "Chinese" and "American" and "European" people. There are so many "China Generalists", so many "American Generalists" and "European Generalists" emerging all the time. In fact, everyone is looking for a new concept of survival, new space, there is a stage, we certainly want to share and share, and then enter the next stage, feel the conflict and contradiction accumulated and too much.
Cultures are supposed to have their own inherited sequences. You commit yourself to something for a long time and then you don't want to do it anymore, you love someone for a long time and then suddenly you don't love them anymore, it's actually some kind of cultural self-blocking. This is also a "law", so people need to re-examine themselves and build their own confidence.
In 1929, Maugham published Fun and Pleasure, a book whose title was so conflicting at the onset of the Great Depression. In it, Maugham portrayed a rare sprightly and spontaneous, naturally fraternal, passionate and honest offbeat woman in Maugham's works, who loved others and especially loved herself. Unlike the vain and vulgar women he has portrayed before.
On many occasions, writers need an ideal character to house their feelings and thoughts. Be yourself, be honest, be uncomplaining, and despite the great changes of the times that are already coming, it does not prevent you from loving sincerely. This image is shaped, but also hides the only woman Maugham ever loved.
One afternoon in 1906, he met the favorite woman of his life, Sue Jones, whose optimism and vitality offset Maugham's melancholic mood and tendency to drift, and the motherly nature in her gave Maugham, who lacked love, a sense of security. For men, a woman's value is financial, emotional, companionable, and a certain complex of filler values, value complements. But in 1913, Sue Jones rejected Maugham. It turned out that she had fallen in love with the Earl's son on her way to Chicago, and the two were later married.
With a good story, just fit in what you want to express in your own consciousness, hide your own will to live, that what a fit, how lucky ah. 1929 October, the United States began the Depression period, fewer spectators to see the theater, the sales of books and magazines plummeted. But for Maugham, who had the craft, was unharmed; his plays were staged around the world, and his novels still enjoyed sky-high prices, with magazines such as Metropolis offering a dollar a word for his short stories. You see, at all times, one needs spiritual food and flow.
And The Breadwinner, which was written in late March 1930 and opened at the London Vaudeville Theater on Sept. 30, ran for five months. Yes, it was a boom in spite of the Depression.
The story goes that Charles Bartle, a stockbroker, suddenly tired of his job, his family and his comfortable life, decides that he will no longer satisfy the insatiable material demands of his wife and children, but he doesn't go off to a secluded island to devote himself to the arts like Charles Strickland in The Moon and Sixpence, while finding a new and ideal partner. He just wants to start a new, uncertain life on his own.
It's really a lot like many of us now in the post-80s near our 30s and 40s, and while the play didn't become a classic, it happens to be a story that will always repeat itself. Ultimately, raising a family will be the key word for a long time. One way to do this is to always have a strong heart and treat loss as consumption.
Shanghai's fast group of 800,000 leaders on the group, filled with a variety of stories, in addition to some of the wind and water, but also a lot of inventory clearing payroll catering enterprises, there is relief to help vegetable farmers, flower farmers, fruit farmers. Yes, in the present time, raising a family has become something that everyone has to face. As long as you have an old and young and a partner, no matter who you are, raising a family is an eternal theme.
In 1930, Maugham was 56 years old. Using today's post 70s as a proxy, in 2030 they would have been able to maintain a relatively youthful physique and actively exercise every day, just like Maugham. Maugham was already a relatively affluent writer in his 30s and 40s.