What do we live for? What does it take to feel happy? Satisfying your own needs or sacrificing personal ambitions for the good of other people? Or maybe something in between? The great English writer Somerset Maugham writes about the difficult, full of temptations, search for one’s own path in life.
Those who do not experience feelings of joy, love and happiness are looking for meaning in life. For those who find it difficult to live in this world. Philip Carey, the main character of The Burden of Human Passions, falls completely into this category. He is the one who has felt the pain and despair of loneliness. From an early age, this boy was left an orphan and was taken in by his priest uncle. The latter did not have any special feelings for the child, and therefore Philip was left to his own devices. Books became his salvation. When this child was sent to school, his peers also began to make fun of him because of his limp. This little boy began to think that suffering was his destiny, his karma. He constantly asks God to make him healthy, but does not receive an answer to his prayers...
It’s so hard to understand that the Universe wants you if you constantly feel pain... Meeting new people changes the already matured protagonist of Somerset Maugham’s novel “The Burden of Human Passions.” He considers his newfound acquaintances to be extraordinary, talented individuals, not noticing that the unusualness of the Englishman Hayward is just a pose that hides emptiness, and Cronshaw is a complete cynic and materialist. The latter charges Philip with the fact that he renounced God, but still retained Christian morality in his soul. Cronshaw tells his friend that everything is subject to his selfish instincts. Even if you do a good deed for someone, for example, give alms to the poor, then this is done precisely for your own satisfaction and self-soothing. One drinks whiskey for his own pleasure, the other helps the poor. In the latter case, such a person will be considered virtuous, without really thinking about why he actually does it. Such views from new friends brought confusion into the soul of the protagonist, but such an existence also does not bring moral peace to the young man...
Awareness of the purposelessness of life leads Philip to fatalism. He does not cry over the lost ideals of his youth, but accepts his existence as it is. However, he cannot feel happiness at the same time. Women for whom he had strong feelings deceived him and brought only pain and suffering. This is especially true for Mildred, who simply took advantage of this man... However, it is not without reason that they say that without suffering there is no real joy and love. Without mental anguish, you will never appreciate quiet, calm happiness. This is what happened with the main character of Somerset Maugham’s story “The Burden of Human Passions” - at the cost of too long, heavy disappointments, the young man came to the understanding that the meaning of our entire existence is, of course, mutual feelings... Finally, Philip will feel peace of mind...
On our literary website you can download Somerset Maugham’s book “The Burden of Human Passions” for free in formats suitable for different devices - epub, fb2, txt, rtf. Do you like to read books and always keep up with new releases? We have a large selection of books of various genres: classics, modern fiction, psychological literature and children's publications. In addition, we offer interesting and educational articles for aspiring writers and all those who want to learn how to write beautifully. Each of our visitors will be able to find something useful and exciting for themselves.
One of the best novels by William Somerset Maugham is considered to be “The Burden of Human Passion,” which was written at the beginning of the 20th century, but still raises pressing issues. From its title it is already approximately clear what will be discussed, but the full depth and breadth of the work can only be appreciated after reading.
The writer talks about the life of Philip Carey, from his childhood to adulthood. Together with the main character, you experience everything that happened in his life. It seems that his thoughts become your own, and you continue to think even after closing the book. His feelings permeate the soul. On the one hand, all this seems understandable, but on the other hand, Philip’s actions raise many questions and sometimes bewilderment.
Philip was left an orphan, and he also has a physical disability. The boy found himself in the care of people who could not give him proper love and warmth. Since childhood, he knew what ridicule, humiliation and pity were. He closed himself off and began reading books. In the depths of his soul, he longed for people, was ready to accept anyone who loved him, but at the same time he fenced himself off from them.
Philip's whole life turned into a search for himself, his calling. He tried a lot of things, but gave up without achieving success, realizing that this business was not for him. He visited different places, communicated with different people who had a certain influence on him. Philip went from a believer in God to a cynic. He wondered what could be considered public morality, good and evil, and whether these concepts were so precise or whether the boundaries were too blurred. Along with his thoughts, readers come to many of their own thoughts, forcing them to ask complex and ambiguous questions.
On our website you can download the book “The Burden of Human Passions” by Maugham William Somerset for free and without registration in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format, read the book online or buy the book in the online store.
Somerset Maugham
THE BURDEN OF HUMAN PASSIONS
The day turned dull and gray. The clouds hung low, the air was chilly - snow was about to fall. A maid entered the room where the child was sleeping and opened the curtains. Out of habit, she glanced at the facade of the house opposite - plastered, with a portico - and walked up to the crib.
Get up, Philip, she said.
Throwing back the blanket, she picked him up and carried him downstairs. He's not quite awake yet.
Mom is calling you.
Opening the door to the room on the first floor, the nanny brought the child to the bed on which the woman lay. It was his mother. She held out her arms to the boy, and he curled up next to her, not asking why he was woken. The woman kissed his closed eyes and with her thin hands felt his warm little body through his white flannel nightgown. She hugged the child close to her.
Are you sleepy, baby? - she asked.
Her voice was so weak that it seemed to be coming from somewhere far away. The boy did not answer and just stretched sweetly. He felt good in a warm, spacious bed, in gentle hugs. He tried to become even smaller, curled up into a ball and kissed her in his sleep. His eyes closed and he fell fast asleep. The doctor silently approached the bed.
Let him stay with me for a little while,” she moaned.
The doctor did not answer and just looked at her sternly. Knowing that she would not be allowed to keep the child, the woman kissed him again, ran her hand over his body; Taking the right leg, she touched all five toes, and then reluctantly touched the left leg. She began to cry.
What's wrong with you? - asked the doctor. - Are you tired.
She shook her head and tears rolled down her cheeks. The doctor leaned towards her.
Give it to me.
She was too weak to protest. The doctor handed the child into the arms of the nanny.
Put him back in bed.
The sleeping boy was carried away. The mother sobbed, no longer holding back.
Poor thing! What will happen to him now!
The nurse tried to calm her down; exhausted, the woman stopped crying. The doctor approached the table at the other end of the room, where the corpse of a newborn baby lay covered with a napkin. Lifting the napkin, the doctor looked at the lifeless body. And, although the bed was fenced off with a screen, the woman guessed what he was doing.
Boy or girl? - she asked the nurse in a whisper.
Also a boy.
The woman didn't say anything. The nanny returned to the room. She approached the patient.
Philip never woke up, she said.
Silence reigned. The doctor again felt the patient’s pulse.
“I guess I’m no longer needed here for now,” he said. - I'll come by after breakfast.
“I’ll take you,” the nurse suggested.
They silently went down the stairs to the hallway. The doctor stopped.
Have you sent for Mrs. Carey's brother-in-law?
When do you think he will arrive?
I don't know, I'm waiting for a telegram.
What to do with the boy? Wouldn't it be better to send him somewhere for now?
Miss Watkin agreed to take him in with her.
Who is she?
His godmother. Do you think Mrs. Carey will get better?
The doctor shook his head.
A week later, Philip was sitting on the floor of Miss Watkin's drawing room in Onslow Gardens. He grew up as an only child in the family and was used to playing alone. The room was filled with bulky furniture, and each ottoman had three large poufs. There were also pillows in the chairs. Philip pulled them down to the floor and, moving the light gilded ceremonial chairs, built an intricate cave where he could hide from the redskins hiding behind the curtains. Putting his ear to the floor, he listened to the distant tramp of a herd of bison rushing across the prairie. The door opened and he held his breath so as not to be found, but angry hands pushed the chair back and the pillows fell to the floor.
Oh, you naughty one! Miss Watkin will be angry.
Peek-a-boo, Emma! - he said.
The nanny leaned over, kissed him, and then began to brush off and put away the pillows.
Shall we go home? - he asked.
Yes, I came for you.
You have a new dress.
The year was 1885, and women were putting bustles under their skirts. The dress was made of black velvet, with narrow sleeves and sloping shoulders; the skirt was decorated with three wide frills. The hood was also black and tied with velvet. The nanny didn't know what to do. The question she had been waiting for was not asked, and she had no prepared answer to give.
Why don't you ask how your mother is doing? - she finally couldn’t stand it.
I forgot. How is mom doing?
Now she could answer:
Your mom is fine. She is very happy.
Mom left. You won't see her again.
Philip didn't understand anything.
Your mom is in heaven.
She began to cry, and Philip, although he did not know what was wrong, began to cry too. Emma, a tall, bony woman with blond hair and rough features, was from Devonshire and, despite many years of service in London, had never unlearned her harsh accent. She was completely moved by her tears and hugged the boy tightly to her chest. She understood what misfortune befell the child, deprived of that only love, in which there was no shadow of self-interest. It seemed terrible to her that he would end up with strangers. But after a while she pulled herself together.
Uncle William is waiting for you,” she said. - Go say goodbye to Miss Watkin, and we'll go home.
“I don’t want to say goodbye to her,” he answered, for some reason ashamed of his tears.
Okay, then run upstairs and put on your hat.
He brought a hat. Emma was waiting for him in the hallway. Voices came from the office behind the living room. Philip stopped hesitantly. He knew that Miss Watkin and her sister were talking with friends, and he thought - the boy was only nine years old - that if he came to see them, they would feel sorry for him.
I'll go say goodbye to Miss Watkin after all.
Well done, go,” Emma praised him.
First tell them that I will come now.
He wanted to arrange his farewell better. Emma knocked on the door and entered. He heard her say:
Philip wants to say goodbye to you.
The conversation immediately fell silent, and Philip, limping, entered the office. Henrietta Watkin was a red-faced, plump lady with dyed hair. In those days, dyed hair was rare and attracted everyone's attention; Philip heard a lot of gossip about this at home when his godmother suddenly changed her color. She lived alone with her older sister, who meekly accepted her advanced years. Their guests were two ladies unknown to Philip; they looked at the boy with curiosity.
“My poor child,” said Miss Watkin and opened her arms wide to Philip.
She began to cry. Philip understood why she did not come out for dinner and put on a black dress. She found it difficult to speak.
“I need to go home,” the boy finally broke the silence.
He pulled away from Miss Watkin's embrace and she kissed him goodbye. Then Philip went up to her sister and said goodbye to her. One of the unfamiliar ladies asked if she could kiss him too, and he sedately allowed it. Although his tears flowed, he really liked that he was the cause of such a commotion; He would have gladly stayed longer to be caressed again, but he felt that he was in the way and said that Emma was probably waiting for him. The boy left the room. Emma went down to the servants' quarters to talk to her friend, and he remained waiting for her on the landing. Henrietta Watkin's voice reached him:
His mother was my closest friend. I just can’t come to terms with the idea that she died.
You shouldn't have gone to the funeral, Henrietta! - said the sister. - I knew you would be completely upset.
One of the unfamiliar ladies intervened in the conversation:
Poor baby! Left an orphan - what a horror! Is he also lame?
"The Burden of Human Passions" (English Of Human Bondage) - one of the most famous novels English writer William Somerset Maugham, written in 1915. The main character of the book is Philip Carey, a lame orphan whose fate can be traced from an unhappy childhood to his student years. Philip painfully searches for his calling and tries to find out what it is meaning of life. He will have to experience a lot of disappointments and part with many illusions before he can find his answer to this question.
Plot
The first chapters are devoted to Philip's life in Blackstable with his uncle and aunt and his studies at the royal school in Terkenbury, where Philip endures a lot of bullying because of his lame leg. Relatives expect that after graduating from school, Philip will enter the Oxford and will take holy orders, but the young man feels that he has no real calling for this. Instead he goes to Heidelberg (Germany), where he teaches Latin, German and French.
During his stay in Germany, Philip meets the Englishman Hayward. Philip immediately takes a liking to his new acquaintance; he cannot help but be admired by Hayward's extensive knowledge of literature and art. However, ardent idealism Hayward does not suit Philip: “He always loved life passionately and experience told him that idealism is most often a cowardly escape from life. The idealist withdraws into himself because he is afraid of the pressure of the human crowd; he does not have enough strength to fight, and therefore he considers it an activity for the mob; he is vain, and since his neighbors do not agree with his assessment of himself, he consoles himself with the fact that he pays them contempt.” Another of Philip’s friends, Weeks, characterizes people like Hayward this way: “They always admire what is usually admired - whatever it is - and one of these days they are going to write a great work. Just think - one hundred and forty-seven great works rest in the soul of one hundred and forty-seven great men, but the tragedy is that not one of these one hundred and forty-seven great works will ever be written. And nothing in the world changes because of this.”
In Heidelberg, Philip ceases to believe in God, experiences an extraordinary elation and realizes that he has thereby thrown off the heavy burden of responsibility that gave significance to his every action. Philip feels mature, fearless, free and decides to start a new life.
After this, Philip makes an attempt to become a chartered accountant in London, but it turns out that this profession is not for him. Then the young man decides to go to Paris and take up painting. New acquaintances studying with him at the Amitrino art studio introduce him to the poet Cronshaw, who leads a bohemian lifestyle. Cronshaw is the opposite of Hayward, cynic And materialist. He ridicules Philip for refusing Christian faith, without throwing away Christian morality along with it. “People strive for only one thing in life - pleasure,” he says. - A person performs this or that act because it makes him feel good, and if it makes other people feel good, the person is considered virtuous; if he is pleased to give alms, he is considered merciful; if he enjoys helping others, he is a philanthropist; if he enjoys giving his strength to society, he is a useful member of it; but you give twopence to a beggar for your own personal satisfaction, just as I drink whiskey and soda for my personal satisfaction.” Desperate Philip asks what, then, according to Cronshaw, is the meaning of life, and the poet advises him to look at Persian carpets and refuses further explanation.
Philip is not ready to accept Cronshaw’s philosophy, but he agrees with the poet that abstract morality does not exist, and refuses it: “Down with legalized ideas about virtue and vice, about good and evil - he will set the rules of life for himself.” Philip gives himself advice: “Follow your natural inclinations, but with due regard for the policeman around the corner.” (To those who have not read the book, this may seem wild, but it should be borne in mind that Philip’s natural inclinations are quite consistent with generally accepted norms).
Philip soon realizes that he will not make a great artist, and enters the medical school at St. Luke's Hospital in London. He meets the waitress Mildred and falls in love with her, despite the fact that he sees all her shortcomings: she is ugly, vulgar and stupid. Passion forces Philip to undergo incredible humiliations, waste money and become delighted with the slightest sign of attention from Mildred. Soon, as one would expect, she leaves for another person, but after a while she returns to Philip: it turns out that her husband is married. Philip immediately breaks off contact with the kind, noble and resilient girl Nora Nesbitt, whom he met shortly after breaking up with Mildred, and repeats all his mistakes a second time. In the end, Mildred unexpectedly falls in love with his college friend Griffiths and leaves the unfortunate Philip.
Philip is at a loss: the philosophy that he invented for himself has shown its complete failure. Philip becomes convinced that the intellect cannot seriously help people at a critical moment in life; his mind is only a contemplator, recording facts, but powerless to intervene. When the time comes to act, a person bows helplessly under the burden of his instincts, passions and God knows what else. This gradually leads Philip to fatalism: “When you take off your head, you don’t cry over your hair, because all your strength was aimed at removing this head.”
Some time later, Philip meets Mildred for the third time. He no longer feels the same passion for her, but still experiences some kind of harmful attraction to this woman and spends a lot of money on her. To top it all off, he goes broke on the stock exchange, loses all his savings, quits medical school and gets a job in a dry goods store. But it was then that Philip solves Cronshaw’s riddle and finds the strength to abandon the last illusion, throw off the last burden. He admits that “life has no meaning and human existence is purposeless. […] Knowing that nothing makes sense and nothing matters, a person can still find satisfaction in choosing the various threads that he weaves into the endless fabric of life: after all, it is a river that has no source and flows endlessly without flowing into no seas. There is one pattern - the simplest and most beautiful: a person is born, matures, gets married, gives birth to children, works for a piece of bread and dies; but there are other, more intricate and amazing patterns, where there is no place for happiness or the desire for success - perhaps some kind of alarming beauty is hidden in them.”
The awareness of the purposelessness of life does not lead Philip to despair, as one might think, but on the contrary makes him happy: “Failure does not change anything, and success is zero. Man is only the smallest grain of sand in a huge human whirlpool that has swept over the earth’s surface for a short moment; but he becomes omnipotent as soon as he unravels the secret that chaos is nothing.”
Philip's uncle dies and leaves his nephew an inheritance. This money allows Philip to return to medical school. While studying, he cherishes the dream of going on a trip and visiting Spain(at one time he was greatly impressed by the paintings El Greco) and countries of the East. However, Philip's new girlfriend, nineteen-year-old Sally, the daughter of his former patient Thorpe Athelney, reports that she is expecting a child. Philip, as a noble man, decides to marry her, despite the fact that this will not allow his dreams of travel to come true. It soon turns out that Sally was mistaken, but Philip does not feel relieved - on the contrary, he is disappointed. Philip understands that you need to live for today, not tomorrow; the simplest pattern of human life is the most perfect. That's why he proposes to Sally after all. He doesn’t love this girl, but he feels great sympathy for her, he feels good with her, and besides, no matter how funny it sounds, he has respect for her, and passionate love, as the story with Mildred showed, often brings nothing but grief.
In the end, Philip even comes to terms with his lame leg, because “without it he could not have felt beauty so keenly, passionately loved art and literature, excitedly followed the complex drama of life. The mockery and contempt to which he was subjected forced him to go deeper into himself and grew flowers - now they will never lose their aroma.” Eternal dissatisfaction is replaced by peace of mind.
Autobiographical
According to Maugham, The Burden of Humanity is “a novel, not a autobiography: Although there are many autobiographical details in it, much more is fictional." And yet it should be noted that, like his hero, Maugham lost his parents at an early age, was raised by a priest uncle, grew up in the town of Whitstable (in the novel Blackstable), studied at the royal school in Canterbury(in the novel Terkenbury), studied literature and philosophy in Heidelberg and medicine in London. Unlike Philip, Maugham was not lame, but he did stutter.
Maugham's attitude to the novel
Maugham himself believed that the novel was overloaded with excessive details, that many scenes were added to the novel simply to increase volume or due to fashion - the novel was published in 1915 - ideas about novels at that time differed from modern ones. Therefore, in the 60s, Maugham significantly shortened the novel “... it took a long time before writers realized that a one-line description often gives more than a full page.” In the Russian translation, this version of the novel was called “Burden of Passions” - so that it would be possible to distinguish it from the original version.
Film adaptations
- 1934 film With Leslie Howard as Philip and Bette Davis as Mildred
- 1946 film starring Paul Henryd as Philip and Eleanor Parker as Mildred
- 1964 film with Laurence Harvey as Philip and Kim Novak as Mildred