The burden of human passions

The first chapters are devoted to Philip’s life in Blackstable with his uncle and aunt, and to study at the Royal School in Terkenbury, where Philip suffers a lot of bullying because of his lame leg. Relatives expect that after graduation, Philip will go to Oxford and take the priesthood, but the young man feels that he does not have a real calling for this. Instead, he goes to Heidelberg ( Germany ), where he teaches Latin, German and French.

During his stay in Germany, Philip met with the Englishman Hayward. Philip immediately imbued with sympathy for his new acquaintance, he can not help but admire Hayward's extensive knowledge of literature and art. However, Hayward’s fervent idealism does not suit Philip: “He always passionately loved life and experience told him that idealism was most often a cowardly flight from life. The idealist withdraws into himself because he fears the pressure of the human crowd; he does not have enough strength to fight, and therefore he considers it an occupation for the mob; he is vain, and since his neighbors disagree with his assessment of himself, he is comforted by paying them contempt. ” Another friend of Philip, Weeks, describes people like Hayward like this: “They always admire what is customary to admire - whatever it is - and the other day 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 changes from this in the world. ”

In Heidelberg, Philip ceases to believe in God, experiences an extraordinary spiritual upsurge, and realizes that he thereby relieved himself of the heavy burden of responsibility that attached significance to his every act. Philip feels mature, fearless, free and decides to start a new life.

After this, Philip makes an attempt to become a certified public accountant in London , but it turns out that this profession is not for him. Then the young man decides to go to Paris and do painting. New acquaintances who work with him at the Amitrino art studio introduce him to the bohemian lifestyle poet Kronshaw. Kronshaw is the opposite of Hayward, a cynic and a materialist . He makes fun of Philip because he abandoned the Christian faith , not rejecting Christian morality along with it. “People only strive in life for one thing - enjoyment,” he says. - A person commits this or that deed because he feels good from it, and if other people feel good from it, they consider a person virtuous; if he is pleased to give alms, he is considered merciful; if he is pleased to help others, he is a benefactor; if he is pleased to devote his strength to society, he is a useful member of it; but you give two pence to a beggar for your personal satisfaction, just as I drink whiskey and soda for my personal satisfaction. ” Desperate Philip asks what then, according to Kronshaw, is the meaning of life, and the poet advises him to look at the Persian rugs and refuses further explanations.

Philip is not ready to accept the Kronshaw philosophy, but he agrees with the poet that abstract morality does not exist, and rejects it: “Down with the legitimized ideas about virtue and vice, about good and evil - he will establish life rules for himself.” Philip gives himself advice: "Follow your natural inclinations, but with due regard to the policeman around the corner." (To someone who has not read the book, this may seem wild, but it should be borne in mind that Philip's natural inclinations are fully consistent with generally accepted norms).

Soon Philip realizes that a great artist will not come out of him, and enters the medical institute 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 flaws: she is ugly, vulgar and stupid. Passion makes Philip go to incredible humiliations, make money and delight at the slightest sign of attention from Mildred. Soon, she, as expected, leaves for another person, but after a while she returns to Philip: it turned out that her faithful was married. Philip immediately breaks the connection with the kind, noble and cheerful girl Nora Nesbitt, whom he met shortly after breaking up with Mildred, and repeats all his mistakes for the second time. In the end, Mildred suddenly falls in love with his college friend Griffiths and abandons the unfortunate Philip.

Philip is at a loss: the philosophy that he came up with for himself has shown his complete failure. Philip is convinced that intelligence in general cannot seriously help people at a critical moment of life, his mind is only a contemplator recording facts, but powerless to intervene. When the time comes to act, a person is powerlessly bending under the burden of his instincts, passions. This gradually leads Philip to fatalism : “Having taken off their heads, they don’t cry through their hair, because all the forces were aimed at removing this head.”

After a while, Philip meets with Mildred for the third time. He no longer feels the former passion for her, but still experiences some kind of disastrous attraction to this woman and spends a lot of money on her. To top it off, he goes broke on the exchange, loses all his savings, drops out of medical school and gets a job in a manufactory shop. But just then Philip unravels the riddle of Kronshaw and finds the strength in himself to abandon the last illusion, to throw off the last burden. He admits that “life has no meaning, and human existence is aimless. [...] Knowing that there is no sense and nothing matters, a person can still be satisfied by choosing the various threads that he weaves into the endless fabric of life: after all, this is a river without a source and endlessly flowing, without flowing either to which seas. There is one pattern - the simplest and most beautiful: a person is born, gets married, gets married, gives birth to children, works for a piece of bread and dies; but there are other, more intricate and surprising patterns, where there is no place for happiness or the pursuit of success - perhaps some kind of alarming beauty is hidden in them. ”

Awareness of the aimlessness of life does not lead Philip into despair, as one might think, but rather makes him happy: “Failure does not change anything, and success is zero. Man is only the smallest grain of sand in a huge human maelstrom that sweeps the earth's surface for a short moment; but he becomes omnipotent as soon as he unravels the mystery that chaos is nothing. ”

Uncle Philip dies and leaves his nephew a legacy. This money allows Philip to return to medical school. During his studies, he cherishes the dream of going on a trip, visiting Spain (at one time he was greatly impressed by the paintings of El Greco ) and the countries of the East. However, Philip's new girlfriend, Sally, nineteen-year-old, the daughter of his former patient, Thorp Atelni, reports that she is expecting a baby. Philip as a noble man decides to marry her, despite the fact that this will not allow his dreams of travel to come true. Soon it turns out that Sally was wrong, but Philip does not feel relief - on the contrary, he is disappointed. Philip understands that you need to live today, and not tomorrow, the simplest pattern of human life and is the most perfect. Therefore, he still makes an offer to Sally. He does not like this girl, but he feels great sympathy for her, he feels good with her, and besides, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, he respects her, and passionate love, as the story with Mildred has shown, often brings only grief.

In the end, Philip even reconciles with his lame leg, because “without her he could not have felt the beauty so keenly, passionately love art and literature, excitedly follow the complex drama of life. The mockery and contempt that he was subjected to made him go deep into himself and grow flowers - now they will never lose their aroma. ” Eternal dissatisfaction is being replaced by peace of mind.

According to Maugham, “The Burden of Human Passion” is “a novel, not an autobiography : although it has many autobiographical details that are far more fictional.” Nevertheless, it should be noted that, like his hero, Maugham lost his parents early, raised as a priest uncle, grew up in the town of Whistable (in the Blackstable novel), studied at the Royal School in Canterbury (in the Terkenbury novel), studied literature and philosophy in Heidelberg and medicine in London. Unlike Philip, Maugham was not lame, but he stuttered.

Maugham himself believed that the novel was overloaded with excessive details, that many scenes were added to the novel simply to increase the volume or because of fashion - the novel was published in 1915 - the ideas about the novels at that time were different from modern ones. Therefore, in the 60s, Maugham significantly reduced the novel “... it took a lot of time before the writers realized: a description of the size of one line often gives more than a full page” ^[1] . In the Russian translation, this version of the novel was called “The Burden of Passion” - so that it was possible to distinguish it from the original version.

• 1934 film with Leslie Howard as Philip and Bette Davis as Mildred
• 1946 film with Paul Henry as Philip and Eleanor Parker as Mildred
• 1964 film with Laurence Harvey as Philip and Kim Novak as Mildred