"The Painted Veil" by W.
Somerset Maugham.
"It was as if for a moment he
raised the corner of a tent making a glimpse of a colorful world and values
she ever dreamed."
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"The
Painted Veil" (2006), John Curran
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My first meeting with William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), dates back to six
years ago when I was fascinated by this English gentleman by the brilliant and
smooth writing, through the readings of "La
Giostra" and "Liza debut novel Lambeth ". Then nothing, the
weather had cleared me his figure, at least until a fortnight ago when a good
promotion of the Adelphi publishing
house reminded me and with it all the freshness of six years earlier.
He born in France, but English by adoption, Maugham is imposed in
the years 1910-40 among the most widely read and well-known writers; his
novels translated into all languages, which followed successful film
adaptations that acuivano fame.
"The Painted Veil" was
among them. Written in 1924 aiming in the magazine "Cosmopolitan", he came out in
volume the following year for a British publisher. But its genesis is all
Italian.
In his early studies undertaken of the writer Dante Alighieri,
became interested in the figure of Pia de 'Tolomei (XIII century), the Sienese
woman in the fifth canto of the "Purgatorio", suspected of adultery,
is brought before her husband in Maremma, then metifica area, to make her sick
and then get rid of her, consequently having failed to kill the plan.
This sad story Maugham impressed to such point that he wanted to
carry in a possible contemporary reinterpretation, in a different key
metaphorical. This created a masterpiece.
In Hong Kong twenties, under the dominion of the British Empire,
nell'elitaria and elegant high-bourgeois class, Kitty Garstin, beautiful and superficial English girl,
spends bored and free life, including secular parties, sports clubs and
dancing. Married to Walter Fane, a
bacteriologist employed by the government, austere and unconventional man,
betrays him with the most lively and handsome Charles Townsend, deputy secretary of Hong Kong.
But the discovery of adultery, abandoned by Kitty is forced to
follow her husband, left on a mission to the town of Mei-tan-fu, devastated by
cholera.
In this hell of dusty, dirty streets, where men and women are buried
in mass graves and where the general anarchy reigns over all, the young woman,
weak constitution, think of a revenge of her husband. Yet the days go by,
and after the initial disturbance, Kitty is a certain physical and inner
stability, through the friendship ofWaddington, wacky
British MP who lives with a Manchu woman and Catholic nuns of the convent,
where begins to serve.
While the grip of cholera is loosened, the young lover does not
remember almost nothing, and instead look with different eyes her husband,
struck by her generosity and love toward others.
The reality presents herself as an electric shock, and that illusion
that concealed definitely falls at his feet.
It will be the beginning of a journey inside his mind and
unconscious.
I could describe this book as the novel of the possibility, or the
many possibilities. But I would now like this issue to the last final
stages of review.
Maugham succeeded with a reason so simple and familiar as that of
adultery, to draw together the threads of a complex and unexpected
twists.
The Western Hong Kong after
the "Opium War" had
become the colony of the British state, is portrayed as a modern society and
active and still tied to the conventions and practices of the
post-Edwardian. Cynical and self-centered, revolving around the community
rather than the individual, the polar opposite of the imaginary town of Mei-tan-fu, with its colors,
visions; the writer summarizes the East employing symbolism, superstition
and transformations, making it meaningful catharsis the protagonist.
Kitty dominates virtually the entire work, with the nuances of his
character, the courage and the fallout analyzed with peculiar instinct in the
maze of female psychology.
But empathy is lurking: Kitty is because as we stumble and we
raised, groping in the dark and just as she is given permission to see the
light only at the end of the story.
Maugham seems to play with the reader, scattering clues; from
the title of the novel, to the poet PB Shelley and a verse of the ballad Oliver
Goldsmith (1730-1774), which contains the meaning of the plot.
And that to solve a mystery in which everyone is busy trying, Kitty,
Dr. Fane, Townsend, Waddington, the Manchu women, the nuns of the
convent: the meaning of life.
The English writer who in life was always accused of misogyny for as
tracing female profiles of his novels, here belies this claim.
Kitty embodies the whole of humanity, and the work becomes a hymn to life, to beauty, to the possibilities.
Perhaps the meaning of life lies precisely in the latter, since
nothing is in vain; every mistake, guilt, unhappiness of little
consequence, are nothing but a fundamental element for a glimpse, though from a
distance, a better life.
"I suspect that the only thing
that allows us to watch without disgust the world we live in is the beauty that
men occasionally create chaos. The paintings that depict, music composing,
writing books, life living. Among all, the richest thing of beauty is a good
life. And 'this is the most perfect work of art. "
