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The Moon and Sixpence is a novel by Maugham first published in April 15th, 1919. It is told in episodic form by a first-person narrator, in a series of glimpses into the mind and soul of the central character Charles Strickland, a middle-aged English stockbroker, who abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire to become an artist. The story is in part based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin.
《月亮与六便士》是毛姆于1919年4月15日首次出版的小说。故事以情景的形式从第一人称进行讲述，描写了一系列关于主人公查尔斯•思特里克兰德的心灵和灵魂的故事。主人公是一位中年英国股票经纪人，为了追求成为艺术家的愿望，他突然抛弃了妻子和孩子。这个故事有一部分是基于画家保罗·高更的生平写成的。
The novel is written largely from the point of view of the narrator, a young, aspiring writer and playwright in London. Certain chapters entirely comprise accounts of events by other characters, which the narrator recalls from memory (selectively editing or elaborating on certain aspects of dialogue, particularly Strickland's, as Strickland is said by the narrator to have a very poor ability to express himself in words). The narrator first develops an acquaintance with Strickland's wife at literary parties, and later meets Strickland himself, who appears to be an unremarkable businessman with no interest in his wife's literary or artistic tastes.
这部小说主要是从伦敦一位年轻、有抱负的作家和剧作家的叙述者的角度来写的。某些章节完全由其他人物的故事组成，而叙述者从记忆中回忆(选择性地编辑或阐述对话的某些方面，尤其是思特里克兰德的，因为叙述者说思特里克兰德的语言表达能力很差)。文中的主人公先是在文学聚会上结识了思特里克兰德的妻子，后来又遇到了思特里克兰德本人。思特里克兰德本人似乎是个平凡的商人，对他妻子的文学或艺术兴趣不大。
Strickland is a well-off, middle-class stockbroker in London sometime in late 19th or early 20th century. Early in the novel, he leaves his wife and children and goes to Paris. He lives a destitute but defiantly content life there as a painter, lodging in run-down hotels and falling prey to both illness and hunger. Strickland, in his drive to express through his art what appears to continually possess and compel him on the inside, cares nothing for physical discomfort and is indifferent to his surroundings. He is helped and supported by a commercially successful but hackneyed Dutch painter, Dirk Stroeve, who recognises Strickland's genius as a painter. After helping Strickland recover from a life-threatening illness, Stroeve is repaid by having his wife, Blanche, abandon him for Strickland. Strickland later discards the wife; all he really sought from Blanche was a model to paint, not serious companionship, and it is hinted in the novel's dialogue that he indicated this to her and she took the risk anyway. Blanche then commits suicide – yet another human casualty in Strickland's single-minded pursuit of art and beauty; the first casualties being his own established life and those of his wife and children.
思特里克兰德是一位活跃在19世纪末或20世纪初中间的伦敦富裕的中产阶级股票经纪人。在小说的开头，他离开妻子和孩子去了巴黎。作为一名画家，他在那里过着贫困而又满足的生活，住在破旧的旅馆里，饱受疾病和饥饿的折磨。思特里克兰德竭力用他的艺术来表达他内心似乎一直占有并强迫着他的东西。此时，他并不在乎身体上的不适，也不在乎周围的环境如何。一位在商业上取得了成功的荷兰画家德克·施特略夫也一直支持他，帮助他。施特略夫承认思特里克兰德是一位天才画家。在帮助思特里克兰德从一场危及生命的疾病中康复之后，施特略夫却受到了报应：他的妻子布兰奇为了思特里克兰德抛弃了他。思特里克兰德后来抛弃了布兰奇，因为他真正想从布兰奇那里得到的只是一个画画的模特，而不是认真的陪伴。从小说的对话中可以看出，他向她暗示了这一点，而布兰奇还是冒了这个险。然后布兰奇自杀了——这是思特里克兰德一心追求艺术和美的过程中又一个牺牲品——第一个受到伤害的是他自己的优越生活，以及他妻子和孩子的人生。
After the Paris episode, the story continues in Tahiti. Strickland has already died, and the narrator attempts to piece together his life there from recollections of others. He finds that Strickland had taken up a native woman, had two children by her, one of whom dies, and started painting profusely. We learn that Strickland had settled for a short while in the French port of Marseilles before traveling to Tahiti, where he lived for a few years before dying of leprosy. Strickland left behind numerous paintings, but his magnum opus, which he painted on the walls of his hut before losing his sight to leprosy, was burnt after his death by his wife per his dying orders.
巴黎之章结束之后，故事继续在塔希提岛展开。此时，思特里克兰德已经去世了，而叙述者试图从别人的回忆中拼凑出他在那里的生活。他发现思特里克兰德在那里娶了一个本地女人，和她生了两个孩子，但其中一个已经死了。我们知道，思特里克兰德在去塔希提岛之前，曾在法国马赛港住过一段时间。他在塔希提岛住了几年，后来他死于麻风病。思特里克兰德留下了许多画，但是他在患麻风病失明之前在他的小屋里的墙上所画的巨著，在他死后被他的妻子按照他临终前的嘱咐烧掉了。
The Moon and Sixpence is not, of course, a life of Paul Gauguin in the form of fiction. It is founded on what I had heard about him, but I used only the main facts of his story and for the rest trusted to such gifts of invention as I was fortunate enough to possess.
当然，《月亮和六便士》并不是保罗·高更真实生活的小说版。它是建立在我所听到的关于他的事情的基础上的，但是我只使用了他故事的主要事实，其余的都是我有幸拥有的发明创造的天赋。
Writing in 1953, Maugham describes the idea for the book arising during a year that he spent living in Paris in 1904: "...I met men who had known him and worked with him at Pont-Aven. I heard much about him. It occurred to me that there was in what I was told the subject of a novel". The idea remained in his mind for ten years, until a visit to Tahiti in 1914, where Maugham was able to meet people who had known Gauguin, inspired him to start writing.
1953年的文字中，毛姆提及自己在1904年他在巴黎生活的那一年，他萌生了写这本书的想法:“……我见过一些认识他的人，他们和他一起在伯亚文工作。我听说过很多关于他的事。我突然想到，这些符合我小说主题中的有一些东西。”这个想法在他脑海里萦绕了10年，直到1914年他访问塔希提岛，在那里毛姆结识了认识高更的人，而这激发了他开始写作。
The critic Amy Dickson examines the relationship between Gauguin and Strickland. She contrasts the novel's description of Strickland, "his faults are accepted as the necessary complement of his merits... but one thing can never be doubtful, and that is that he had genius," with Gauguin's description of himself, "I am an artist and you are right, you're not mad, I am a great artist and I know it. It's because I know it that I have endured such sufferings. To have done otherwise I would consider myself a brigand -- which is what many people think I am." Dickson sums up the novel as follows: "Maugham was fascinated by the impact of the arrival of modernism from Europe on an insular British consciousness and the emergence of the cult of the modernist artist-genius -- The Moon and Sixpence is at once a satire of Edwardian mores and a Gauguin biography."
评论家艾米·迪克森研究了高更和思特里克兰德之间的关系。她对比了小说中对思特里克兰德的描述，“他的缺点被认为是他优点的必要补充……但有一点是毋庸置疑的，那就是他有天赋”。高更曾经这样描述自己，“我是一个艺术家，你是对的，你没有疯，我是一个伟大的艺术家，我知道这一点。因为我知道我已经忍受了这样的痛苦。否则，我就会认为自己是个强盗——就像许多人认为的那样。”迪克森对小说的总结认为:“毛姆着迷于欧洲现代主义的到来对狭隘的英国意识的影响，以及对现代主义艺术家天才的崇拜的出现——《月亮与六便士》既是对爱德华七世道德规范的讽刺，也是一部高更的传记。”
According to some sources, the title, the meaning of which is not explicitly revealed in the book, was taken from a review of Maugham's novel Of Human Bondage in which the novel's protagonist, Philip Carey, is described as "so busy yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet." According to a 1956 letter from Maugham, "If you look on the ground in search of a sixpence, you don't look up, and so miss the moon." Maugham's title echoes the description of Gauguin by his contemporary biographer, Meier-Graefe (1908): "He [Gauguin] may be charged with having always wanted something else."
根据小道消息, 书中没有明确透露的标题的具体意思，在对毛姆的小说《人性枷锁》的书评中，小说的主人公菲利普·凯莉将标题的意义描述为“忙着渴望月亮,他从未见过六便士在他的脚下。”根据毛姆1956年的一封信，“因为你在地上寻找一枚六便士硬币，而你没有抬头，所以错过了月亮。”毛姆的书名与他同时代的传记作家迈尔-格拉芙(1908)对高更的描述相呼应:“他(高更)可能被认为一直想要别的东西。” |
