著者

後藤 武士

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.26, no.2, pp.185-220, 1949

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<p>All the books that come between Liza of Lambeth and The Moon and Sixpence are regarded in this essay as so many records of Mr. Maugham's long pilgrimage to find himself. Among them Mrs. Craddock and Of Human Bondage are especially important for the study of his later works. There are two minor characters worthy of note in Mrs. Craddock. The one is Miss Ley, whose attitude towards life is a shrug of the shoulders, and whose temperate philosophy of "live and let live" is also entirely that of the author. The other is Dr. Ramsay, whose position in this novel is the very one which Mr. Maugham later steps into to write in the first person. For all its defects as a novel, the attractive sincerity of the author makes Of Human Bondage a highly original book. Seeing that his own philosophy of life as outlined in The Summing Up about twenty years later is practically that of Philip almost unmodified, I felt justified in accepting the hero's spiritual adventure which ends in a triumphant nihilism or refined agonsticism as the foundation of the author's compassion and tolerance, the keynotes of his later works. Of Human Bondage, however, is, like Liza of Lambeth, an isolated attempt which has no successor. In The Moon and Sixpence we see the emergence of Somerset Maugham, the mature writer who has found his material and his style. His outlook on life has acquired new freedom and composure. Moreover, he adopted a new technique of writing in the first person singular. This may be but a variety of the autobiographical form suggested by the method of Henry James, but it is a technique so perfectly in keeping with his disposition that it makes us feel the more that he has at last found himself. In spite of the author's disapproval of the technique of "the stream of consciousness," the psychoanalytical view is found reflected in the treatment of Strickland's art and in the author's own reference to the psychology of the writer in creating scoundrels. Cakes and Ale and The Razor's Edge are direct successors to this novel. Importance is attached to those written in the first person as works most characteristic of Mr. Maugham and more detailed comments are given to them than to the rest. The importance of The Painted Veil, otherwise a negligible book, lies in the fact that it is the first instance of Mr. Maugham taking up the theme of the reality of the spirit. In Cakes and Ale the art of Mr. Maugham is revealed in full maturity. It is indeed the work of a man who knows his own limitations. Rosie is most typical of his excellent characterizations. The Narrow Corner reflects a conflict in the author-a conflict between the self that has accepted the actualities of human life as they are and another self that now begins to suspect the existence of the spirit that the former has tried to believe non-existent. Those who were disappointed by Theatre, Up at the Villa, and Christmas Holiday must have been pleased to find a worthy successor to Cakes and Ale in The Razor's Edge. From every point of view it shows the culmination of Mr. Maugham's novels written in the first person. Its central theme makes one suspect the presence, in the author's heart, of a craving for God and immortality which his reason has forced back to the deep recesses of the subconsciousness. Both of the two latest works Then and Now and Catalina are to be regarded as the products of Mr. Maugham's belief that the novelist should turn to the historical novel towards the end of his career, a lesson the author learned from the failure of his second book. Mr. Maugham has rightly complained that the critics have, using the word in a slightly depreciatory sense, called him "competent." But it can not be denied that what we feel after we have read some of his novels is not unqualified admiration. For all the merits they have, they always leave for (at</p><p>(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)</p>