圖書標籤: 毛姆 W.SomersetMaugham 小說 英國文學 英文原版 女性 英文 愛情
发表于2024-11-05
The Painted Veil pdf epub mobi txt 電子書 下載 2024
Shallow, poorly educated Kitty marries the passionate and intellectual Walter Fane and has an affair with a career politician, Charles Townsend, assistant colonial secretary of Hong Kong. When Walter discovers the relationship, he compels Kitty to accompany him to a cholera-infested region of mainland China, where she finds limited happiness working with children at a convent. But when Walter dies, she is forced to leave China and return to England. Generally abandoned, she grasps desperately for the affection of her one remaining relative, her long-ignored father. In the end, in sharp, unexamined contrast to her own behavior patterns, she asserts that her unborn daughter will grow up to be an independent woman. The Painted Veil was first published in 1925 and is usually described as a strong story about a woman's spiritual journey. To more pragmatic, modern eyes, Kitty's emotional growth appears minimal. Still, if not a major feminist work, the book has literary interest. Sophie Ward's uninflected reading is competent if not compelling.
William Somerset Maugham, CH (January 25, 1874 – December 16, 1965) was an English playwright, novelist, and short story writer. He was one of the most popular authors achieving recognition as the highest paid of his profession during the 1930s.
Commercial success with high book sales, successful play productions and a string of film adaptations, backed by astute stock market investments, allowed Maugham to live a very comfortable life. Small and weak as a boy, Maugham had been proud even then of his stamina, and as an adult he kept churning out the books, proud that he could.
Yet, despite his triumphs, he never attracted the highest respect from the critics or his peers. Maugham himself attributed this to his lack of "lyrical quality", his small vocabulary and failure to make expert use of metaphor in his work.
It seems equally likely that Maugham was underrated because he wrote in such a direct style. There was nothing in a book by Maugham that the reading public needed explained to them by critics. Maugham thought clearly, wrote lucidly, and expressed acerbic and sometimes cynical opinions in handsome, civilized prose. He wrote in a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and won critical acclaim. In this context, his writing was criticized as "such a tissue of clichés that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way"[16].
Maugham's homosexual leanings also shaped his fiction, in two ways. Since, in life, he tended to see attractive women as sexual rivals, he often gave the women of his fiction sexual needs and appetites, in a way quite unusual for distinguished authors of his time. "Liza of Lambeth," "Cakes and Ale" and "The Razor's Edge" all featured women determined to service their strong sexual appetites, heedless of the result.
Also, the fact that Maugham's own sexual appetites were highly disapproved of, or even criminal, in nearly all of the countries in which he traveled, made Maugham unusually tolerant of the vices of others. Readers and critics often complained that Maugham did not clearly enough condemn what was bad in the villains of his fiction and plays. Maugham replied in 1938: "It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me."
Maugham's public account of his abilities remained modest; toward the end of his career he described himself as "in the very first row of the second-raters". In 1954, he was made a Companion of Honour.
Maugham had begun collecting theatrical paintings before the First World War and continued to the point where his collection was second only to that of the Garrick Club[17]. In 1948 he announced that he would bequeath this collection to the Trustees of the National Theatre, and from 1951, some 14 years before his death, it began its exhibition life and in 1994 they were placed on loan to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden.
這種“無法逃避的命運”的話題真是被毛姆偏愛啊,所以其實全書也是Kitty揭開麵紗的過程吧。說真的最後實在是過於誠實瞭。
評分這種“無法逃避的命運”的話題真是被毛姆偏愛啊,所以其實全書也是Kitty揭開麵紗的過程吧。說真的最後實在是過於誠實瞭。
評分I like how Maugham exposes the weakness of humanity without mercy. Kitty tried so hard to be free, to have control of herself and to be a better self but all in vain. She just could not escape the confinement of her upbringing. Truth is few people can. Maugham was such a humanity observer and he did not try to beautify it.
評分alas..
評分#每周一本英文書# 2018_17/54 死的卻是狗……
一直以为这只是一个以神秘东方背景为卖点的爱情故事,一对互不了解却匆匆结合的夫妇,军阀混战时期一个霍乱横行的中国南方小城,异国他乡,生与死的考验,绝望中的互相理解与抚慰,爱情的温暖战胜死亡的寒冷,一点也不像毛姆。但是我错了,竟然让好莱坞先入为主。 毛姆...
評分该《面纱》的初版紧随电影问世,后又被列入“重现经典”再版,但仍“重现”着初版中的错误,粗略统计近三百处,恐怕是近年来翻译作品中不多见的,很大程度上扭曲了这部优秀作品的真实含义。 其中,有望文生义、或粗心看错造成的误译: 比如,沃尔特弥留之际醒来,说了一句:“...
評分如果说旅行对于写作者来说,是一次难得的机遇,那么这个机遇对于当时的毛姆来说,真的是一次修心之旅。是旅行让他见识了这个世界不同国家的地方,也让他找到了不同的灵感,写下了许多优秀作品。 在毛姆所在的年代,不论是当时的英国还是法国亦或者远在大洋彼岸的中国,都是混乱...
評分刘瑜这样写毛姆,“读他的小说,很像和一个普通老头子喝茶,边喝边听他讲自己身边的琐事。这大约也是为什么很多评论家视他为‘二流作家’的原因。他的小说里,技巧性、创新性的东西太少了。”身边有朋友也这样和我谈起过毛姆,他在我心里只是二流,一流是卡夫卡、列夫·托尔斯...
評分2016年4月12日凌晨1点19分,有好几件事情混杂在一起:①困 ②刚刚过去的××岁生日 ③毛姆的《面纱》昨天付梓印刷 ④这篇毫无头绪的文章。这些纷杂无序的事情同时出现在这一精确的时间点上,也许包含着某种隐喻。正如《面纱》开篇所说的:“那描画的面纱,芸芸众生称之...
The Painted Veil pdf epub mobi txt 電子書 下載 2024