Yi
1919 fall, Maugham with his same-sex close friend Haxton, via the United States, after New York and Chicago take a stay to Asia . They traveled from Saigon to Shanghai via Hong Kong, then went north to Tianjin and Beijing, then turned back to Shanghai, and sailed up the Yangtze River to the mountain city of Chongqing. He returned to Shanghai at the beginning of January of the following year, and went to live in Hong Kong for a few days, and finally returned to England via Suez.
Based on his four-month travel experience in China, Maugham wrote three works: the essay "On the Screen of China" (1922), the drama "East of Suez" (1922) set in Beijing and The novel "The Painted Veil" (The Painted Veil, literally translated as "Colorful Veil", 1925) with the background of Hong Kong and Mainland China.
Maugham said in the preface of "The Veil" that the novel was inspired by the verses in Dante's "Divine Comedy: Purgatory". In 1894, when Maugham was a student of medical school, he went to Florence on vacation. The landlord's daughter taught him to read "The Divine Comedy: Purgatory". There are a few words in it: "Remember me, I am the Pia, / Siena nurtured me, and Maremma destroyed me, / The one who took out his gem ring before and brought it to me People, /should be aware of this.” (Huang Wenjie’s translation) The landlord’s daughter explained to him that Pia (Pia, translated by Dong Qiao as “Bi Ya”, obviously more vivid) is a noblewoman in Siena, and her husband suspects She went out of the wall and put her in a poisonous and derelict house in Maremma. She was not dead, so her husband threw her down the window. Pre-Raphaelite painter Rossetti’s masterpiece "Bia" paints this sad story.
This story inspired Maugham's creative imagination and lasted for many years, until he went to Hong Kong, heard a similar story, and found a suitable role before writing "The Veil".
2.
The title of "The Veil" comes from Shelley's sonnet: "Don't unveil this colorful screen (that is,'the colorful veil'), it is called life by the living; / although the picture painted on it looks very different Reality./It's just a random coloring/to imitate everything we would like to believe to be true;" (Wu Di's translation)
Katie is a beautiful and vain girl who has been choosing a son-in-law for many years, but at the age of twenty-five, she hasn't married yet, and she is about to become an old virgin. At this time, Walter Fein, a bacteriologist working in Hong Kong, expressed her admiration for her. Katie married him in a panic and went to Hong Kong with him. I didn't know much before marriage. After the marriage, Katie found that he was unattractive. He was a "reserved, conservative, indifferent, and self-control" man. Just as she was getting more and more tired of Walter, the handsome and handsome assistant Chief Secretary Charles Tang appeared in front of her, and the two soon fell in love and tried frequently. One time, they were found by Walter during a noon tryst at Katie's house. However, Walter did not expose or make public statements. Instead, he applied to go to the "Meitan Mansion" where the plague is prevalent in the mainland, and asked Katie to go with him. Up to now, Katie had to show her husband. It was a mistake for her to marry him. At this time, she loves Charles with all her heart. She wants to divorce Walter and then marry Charles. Katie thought that Charles would abandon his wife and marry her like her. But Charles only thought of his own future and did not want to divorce his wife. He clearly said to Katie: "A man loves a woman deeply, but it does not mean that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her."
Katie is desperate. I can only go to the cholera epidemic area with Walter. In Meitan Mansion, Walter worked hard and won the love of the local military and civilians, and the respect of the French nuns who rescued there. Katie met the Customs Assistant Commissioner Weddington there, and under Wei's guidance, she went to the monastery to help the nuns there to take care of the sick and children. At work, she gradually forgot about Charles and gradually developed a good impression of Walter. However, after learning that Katie was pregnant, Walter unfortunately contracted cholera and died. The last sentence he said to Katie was: "It's the dog who died."
Katie didn't understand the meaning of this sentence. Weddington explained that it was the last sentence in Goldsmith's "Elegy". : A kind-hearted man brought the dog back and got along well at first, but then the dog went crazy and bit the man. But the man came alive, but the dog died.
Katie returned to Hong Kong, but Charles asked his wife to take her to her home. She went back to bed with Charles again. Katie disliked herself extremely and hurriedly took care of everything. She returned to London. At this time, her mother had passed away, and she went to the Bahamas with her father.
three
This novel Maugham did not go well. It was his first novel written for several years. In the meantime, he made several long trips, and did not complete it until September 1924. The novel has been serialized in a magazine in New York since November of this year, in a magazine in London since December, and published simultaneously in New York and London in April of the following year, with the first printing of 8,000 copies.
When the novel was serialized, there was a Ryan in Hong Kong who had the same surname as the protagonist of the novel. He wanted to sue Maugham. Maugham spent 250 pounds to settle the lawsuit and changed the protagonist’s surname to when the novel was officially published. Fein. At the same time, the Assistant Chief Secretary of Hong Kong also believed that his reputation was slandered. Maugham had to change the colony of Hong Kong where the story took place to the fictional "Qingyuan", and the later version was changed back.
Due to the introduction of books and the "infringement" lawsuit, "The Veil" has almost become a bestseller after it was published. It was reprinted five times in London in just a few years, and the number of copies reached 23,000. Later it was adapted into a stage play and performed in London, and then into a movie in 1934, starring Greta Garbo and Herbert Marshall. It has been on the screen again recently.
The critics' praise and criticism of "The Veil" are very inconsistent. The French critic Xu Wei is a classic novel, while the British "The Spectator" magazine believes that "it is cliche, artificial and unreliable." The famous British biographer Linton Stir Laqi read a novel when he was ill in bed and was rated as "second class and first class".
Fourth,
as the themes of all Maugham's novels, "The Veil" also reveals that love and marriage are both unreal colored veils. Uncovering this veil, "will be a road to tranquility."
After the novel was published, some critics thought that the "reserved, conservative, indifferent, and self-made" Walter in the novel was a portrayal of Maugham himself, but Maugham himself said that he was modeled after his brother Frederick. In his later years, Maugham also told his nephew Robin: "I once described a portrait of your father in a book I wrote. I think it's the book "The Veil"." Maugham had no relationship with his brother. And, according to Robin: "He has many reasons to hate my father-and one of the reasons is jealousy."
And what Walter said to Katie in the novel: "I have no illusions about you at all. I know you are stupid, frivolous, and empty-headed, but I love you. I know your intentions, your ideals, and you are snobbish. , Vulgar, but I love you. I know you are a second-rate guy, but I love you.” Some commentators think this is actually about Maugham’s wife Cyril. Maugham regretted his wife after getting married. He always felt that Cyril set a trap to make him marry her. After they got married, they lived together for ten years (Maugham continued to travel with close friends of the same sex), and both felt that this was an unfortunate ten years. Maugham's hatred of Cyril has been with him throughout his life. Therefore, in his writing, it is impossible to find touching love and a happy marriage.
Five
Two months after the publication of "The Veil", Lu Xiaoman, who was in love, read the novel. In his diary on June 28, 1925, Lu Xiaoman wrote: "Because I don’t have strength, I stayed in bed to read it. After finishing a book of "The Painted Veil", it made me very sad; although I know that I may not be as miserable as the woman in the book. The protagonist in the book struggles for love to achieve his goal; But after a few days of being together, the man died, leaving her alone with her father to spend her dying years. Mo! Do you think there is such a cruel thing in the world? I don’t know why I should worry about my deceased person, so I cried for a long time. I cried so much that I still have a faint pain in my heart! Thinking of you makes me tremble even more, I hope that unfortunate things will not find us..."
Obviously, Lu Xiaoman misread "The Veil", but unfortunately it foreshadows her. My own fate later.
("The Veil" [English] WS Maugham, translated by Ruan Jinglin, Chongqing Publishing House, December 2006)
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